I’ve built a kind of manual dry kiln on some plans from finewoodworking. One baic question i have about drying is why go to 6 or 7%? My home will never average that dry, maybe if we install air conditioning someday, and become rich enough to run it? Right now we heat with wood, but things still realatively cool, max 70, lows 60. My moisture meter says my floors in my house are %8 right now. If i dry my lumber to %6, cut it into flooring and install it tight at %6, wont it crush the fibers when it expands to %15 during the summer? Is this why most flooring is 2 1/2 inches wide? to keep the expansion and contraction to a minimum? How wide could you go? I’ve got an old farm house with big gaps between 6″ wide yellow pine floors on the main floor, and i’m putting my cherry upstairs. Would you stick with 2 1/2? And for furniture construction they say to equalize the piece with the enviroment the furniture will be in. So do i dry it to 6%, and store it, where it will acclimate to %15 this summer just like my house? Or do i put it back in the kiln, and dry it again to 6% and quickly assemble it as dry as possible? It seems like you wouldn’t bother running your kiln for so long to get the wood dryer than it would be when you would assemble it anyways. I guess the big problem comes from wood stored outside in the winter at 15% MC and brought into the house at6% MC. In the summer here in michigan, everything is pretty wet in and out.