Hi. I’m making my first project in hardwood and need to get the wood seasoned as soon as possible – cash flow…
Someone told me that if I pass the wood over the jointer first it will dry quicker than if I just stack it the way it comes in from the timber yard. Anyone have experience of doing this before stacking or got any other tips?
If it makes any difference, I’m working with ash and sapele.
Thanks.
Roger
Replies
The quickest way to dry wood is to use a kiln or take it to someone who has a kiln. The basic rule of thumb is that it takes one year for each inch of thickness to air dry wood at 20% down to 12%. It needs to be properly stacked and stickerred so that air can easily blow through the stack. Once it is at 12%, it should be brought inside and further acclimated to the environment of the shop.
Short of kiln drying, there is not real way to rush it. Partially machining the wood will have little affect.
Missed out the important piece of information that it's been kiln dried to 12% and this is to get it down to 9/10% inside the house. Thanks.
If your shop is not at the same relative humidity as you house, then I would skim plane the boards and take them inside and stack and sticker them in the house. This is the only way to acclimate them to the environment the furniture will be in. It's always recommended that wood be surfaced equally on both sides. If I'm dealing with a fussy job, I will surface in two steps: one to get the the approximate size, and then a final sizing with a rest period of a couple of days in between.Howie.........
The Shrinkulator says you will get about 0.1" of shrinkage across a 12" wide Ash board, going from 12% to 9%. So you might consider whether that is enough to cause heartache at this stage, especially given that the seasonal variation is likely to be of the same magnitude (or greater). It's more important to build in allowances for movement so the finished piece will stay together when the wood moves."Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein
http://www.albionworks.net
I'm not sure I fully understand the condition of your stock; you've bought green (freshly felled and milled) stock or this is dry (ish) boards from a supplier..??
Even if your boards are dried to around 9% M/C they're gonna need some sticker time to acclimatise to your shop temps and humidity; the longer you can leave em the more chance of them being stable.. that said, there's nothing guaranteed..
Jumping on em too soon is inviting disaster though... the wood has a high chance of moving, usually bow, cup or twist..
If you can sticker them someplace where they'll be dry, you might be able to accelerate things a little by directing a fan to blow evenly across them.. I wouldn't count on that though...
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Thanks for all the tips, I've bought the stock dryish from a supplier and am wondering when I can get cracking. I've ordered a moisture meter which should help me take a view!
Roger
There ya go... that's the best way to assess things....I dare say I'm nae the only guy to be overly eager to rush into a project only to see it warp and crack.. trust me, I can more than understand the desire for a fast turnover, but it just isn't worth it...Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
I can more than understand the desire for a fast turnover..
I got married and it worked out OK!
I thought about marriage once... bought a Landrover instead... I donno which woulda been worse..
;)Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Besides what the other guys said - and they're all pretty much on the mark - assuming you've got 'green' stock, surfacing it prior to drying is counter productive. Rough stock drys more evenly and is less prone to checking than surfaced stock.
Yes running it over a jointer will start it toward dry sooner.. if you remove an 1/8 of an inch it has that much less to dry. Plus the thinner something is the quicker it will dry.
Now help yourself out..
keep the room you are storing the wood in as warm as you are comfortable with.. make certain it's not humidified, sticker it up and strap it down. If you have a way to duct the furnace air over the wood do so. even a flexible dryer hose from the vent to the woodpile will help..
Realize that 7% moisture is only the goal. doesn't mean that you can't do some basic trimming before hand. cut boards nearly to length and width and thickness.. the less wood that needs drying the sooner the wood reaches 7%
I've taken wood from 12% to 7 percent in a little over a week using just those techniques..
I had a pile [450 bd ft or so of] roughsawn pine that I took from about 20% to about 9% in 2 weeks. Stacked and stickered, in a 70 F shop. 2 box fans blowing across them perpendicular to their length. 2 dehumidifiers running all the while.
By the way, I planed em before stickering, and that was a mistake. Way too much moisture led to alot of clogging.
Like some have said, best to let it acclimatize in the place it'll be.
Good luck.
KenKen Werner
Hamilton, NY
Hard for me down here to imagine 12% lumber that needs to be given more time to dry.
Location, location ... According to the site below, there's pretty much no place anywhere in the Southeast that you can expect average relative humidity to stay below 50% in any month of the year ... and in Florida, there's no place (other than Key West, oddly) where the monthly average stays under 80% ... at any time of year. And, there are certainly a few Southeastern cities listed, whose winters are going to cause indoor, heated air to dry way out.
Of course, 80% relative humidity doesn't mean the wood tries to reach all the way to 80%, but 12% ... I might have to let that set in the shop and soak UP some moisture before I'd better work it.
http://water.dnr.state.sc.us/climate/sercc/climateinfo/historical/avgrh.html#FL
Clay
concerning the fans and dehumidfiers
i wondering if you created a box from 2x8 sheets of styrofoam insulation what ever size you need for the stock, place a dehumidfier inside and cover the box would you get the moisture content down any faster. i posted this a while back no replies you are the first person who mentioned dehumidfiers in and post i've read. seems logical taking the moisture out use a dehumidfier.
this could be interestingThomas B. Palumbo
CUSTOM WOODWORKING
Tommy...
the danger of this is that the outer surfaces of the board will dry faster than the inside; the tensions created will lead to warping and checking. Your drying rate has to be slow enough to let internal moisture migrate to the outside at its own pace..
Where's Jon when ya need him....???Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Mike,
this is what worked for me, not going to claim the high holy ground on it because it's experiance and not research.
To go from 25% moisture to 7% quickly will cause all sorts of problems and needs to be very carefully done, however to go from 12% to 7% is not a tremendous stretch and The wood isn't in a vacumm.. It will "relax" while you are working with it.
frenchy...
my caution is based on an inbuilt "can I afford to replace this" circuit... invariably the answer is along the lines of "dinna be daft!"...
mind you... at $0.18 / bf for bw I can se how you're more comfortable experementing...
<who still thinks that a gloat of that magnitude is bordering on immoral...
me..?...jealous..??
Ahem...
;)Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Mike,
You may have a point there, buying "surplus" wood direct from a sawmill is sure a lot cheaper than buying the same wood at full retail from some supplier. What I don't understand is why it's not done by everyone..
Seriously if you contact woodmiser they will give you a nearby owner and while those guys have prices that vary all over the place you'd think they could give you a list of some of the medium sized sawmills in your area..
I'm certain that every state in the union has at least a few sawmills. Even Arizona has a few trees..
mind you... at $0.18 / bf for bw I can se how you're more comfortable experementing...
[hijack] Mike, what kind of price do you pay for something like red oak over there? Or is it not used?
I had picked up some red oak for $1.50 & $2.50 bdf from a local Wood-Mizer user. It was at 6% was planed but had rough sides/ends. That price is about 1/3-1/4 of what I would have paid at a big box store like Lowes. To me certainly worth the extra labor of cleaning up the sides/ends.jt8
Opportunity doesn't knock. You knock, opportunity answers. -- American Proverb
John... following my first project, I've made the concious decision to try to work exclusivly with locally grown hardwoods; I figure it's the only way I can guarantee that I'm buying from a properly managed source... I buy my stock from here..
http://www.scottish-hardwoods.com/Mike Wallace
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Gooood Gawd, am I reading the list correctly? A flatsawn oak plank would run £14-25?! That is like $28-50 bdft!
If I ever get a chance to make another hop across the pond, maybe I should just bring "timber" as my carry on luggage :)
jt8
Opportunity doesn't knock. You knock, opportunity answers. -- American Proverb
A flatsawn oak plank would run £14-25?! That is like $28-50 bdft!
noooooooooooo..... noooo.. the prices are per cube; remember there's 12 bdft to the cube... puts it around $2.33-$4.17 / bdftMike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
at the time, I was making a pine floor for my new 24 x 16 x 10 shop. Under the wood was plastic over styrofoam, but the rest of the room was empty space, but for the fans, empire heater and dehumidifiers. I thought of making a smaller space to contain the drying wood, but it seemed like the open space served well to hold the extra moisture. I dunno. It worked for me.Ken Werner
Hamilton, NY
thank you ken and mike for the insite into my curiousity
one day when things quiet down i"ll experament and let you all know about itThomas B. Palumbo
CUSTOM WOODWORKING
If it is at 12% it is not worth worrying about. even interior humidity can swing from 12 to 6%. And the difference in the stock will not be all that much. We are talking 32nds here not quarters of an inch. At this point I would mill the lumber to demension pluss an eigth or so. Then let it sit a while (3 days) and do the final demensioning. This is my proceedure and I've never had problems.
Have fun.
Mike
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