I am new to woodworking – having attended evening classes I have caught the bug. After careful negotiations with my family, I am being allowed to take back my garage from my kids and I am about to convert it into a workshop.
The garage is a concrete pre-fab with corrogated roof and although dry inside, is not fully sealed around the eaves. It is unheated. I have not had any major rust problems with things stored in there.
Am I going to have a problem though with wood storage? Obviously the ideal is to have constant temperature and constant low humidity to keep wood stable, but could you put numbers to this? I live in south England which is pretty temperate (actually it has rained solidly for the last week…)
One thing I learned the hard way at my evening classes is how much wood has its own opinion on what shape it would like to be…
If I heat the garage, I think I am just going to be heating West Sussex as much as the inside of my garage, as insulation is poor.
Apologies if I am asking something that is covered elsewhere on your site – I have looked but couldn’t find specifics on this.
Michael
Replies
Michael,
The following is a reprint of an answer I wrote a few weeks ago in response to a similar question, but it covers your situation also:
"First of all, unless you have a very tightly sealed building and sophisticated humidity controls, the humidity in your shop will be whatever it wants to be, although you can push it up or down a bit with heating and air conditioning possibly combined with humidifiers and dehumidifiers.
The concept of an ideal humidity for a shop is a myth, as is the concept that there is an ideal moisture content for wood. You can build perfectly good furniture in the Pacific Northwest during the rainy season with wood having a high moisture content and you can build equally good furniture in a New England shop in the dead of winter when the humidity and the moisture content of the wood are just a few points above zero. If the furniture is properly designed and built, a piece built in one extreme of environment will be able to go to the other extreme without any problems.
What you need to strive for is maintaining a relatively constant humidity level in the shop from week to week. It can be drier in the winter and wetter in the summer if that is what the local weather dictates, but it is sudden day to day swings that make woodworking difficult because then the wood will then be moving as you work with it.
So don't worry about your shop's humidity levels other than trying to keep them relatively stable. Turning on the heat or the air conditioning only when you are in the shop would not be a good idea for instance.
Whatever environment is comfortable for you to work in is fine for the wood. As long as you maintain a fairly even relative humidity, store your wood in the shop, and allow new wood to adjust to your shop's humidity before you use it, the actual numbers mean very little."
If I can help you further please post additional questions.
John White
John - I really appreciate the advice - thanks - Michael
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