Hey all,
I've got a stack of osage air drying in the yard right now and I'm having some potentially serious issues with the bottom board. This is the first time I've dried lumber myself so it's a learning process. I've gathered as much knowledge as I could from the internet and a couple books. This is all being done cheap, and I don't have access to all the tools and space that would be ideal. The space that the stack is on isn't completely level but it is flat. Stickers are just 1x4's in white pine. Ends were sealed with polyurethane. I was careful to stack the boards progressively from thickest to thinnest, and used shims where needed because the boards were perfectly consistent in thickness. It isn't perfect but it's stacked about as flat as it's gonna get. If I were planning on running all the boards through a planer and losing half the thickness of each I wouldn't be worried but I want to retain as much thickness as possible and thus the flatter the boards are kept the better.
I thought things were going pretty well but then this started happening.
The bottom board is both cupping and twisting by a significant amount, and as its the bottom board whatever twisting happens to it is translated up through the other boards above it to an extent. My only idea is to add more sandbags on top of the stack but this board being over 2" thick I wonder how many it would take to flatten the board back. Each of the bags on top of there now weighs 60 lbs so I imagine it would take a ton of weight to get that board flat. Thoughts or advice?
Thanks