Wood drying question

Nathan House

Nathan House

Joined
Feb 14, 2000
Messages
1,204
Hi
I recently came across some excellent figured spalted
birdseye maple.My question is what is a good way to speed up the drying process.The wood is green,and I am going to have it stablized
I now it has to be down around 12% .I know it can be kiln dryed,were would one go do have somthing like that down?
Thanks Nathan:)
 
someone else can give more info on kiln drying, but if I was at home(don't relaly know places around here), i'd head over to one of local schools and bat my eyelashes at the art teacher. ;)

Seriously, if we're just talking about normal kilng work, as art teacher if they will throw it in with a batch of pottery/sculptures/whatever theyr'e working on tat the time.
 
:eek: pottery kilns go up over 1000 deg when they're tryin to cook clay. You'd get a pile of ashes back!

I don't know where you can go to have it kiln dried, but its not to hard to dry it at home. Just takes time. Most important thing is to seal the end grain to prevent splitting, and to keep it straight. For lumber, lots of folks just put 1/4" to 1/2" slats between boards and stack them somewhere thats low humidity.That takes a long time though.
I'd go ahead and cut the stuff down into the blocks you'll send to be stabilized. Cut them oversized cause it will shrink. Leave them a little long too and seal the end grain. Then clamp them together with thin maybe 1/4" X 1/4" slats in between them at each end. You can clamp a bunch together this way with a furniture clamp and it will help prevent warping but will still allow air to get to them all. Then stick them in front of a dehumidifier or a heating vent.
 
Hi this is the Daqo'tah

Lets say I have some oak from the back yard that I wish to turn into a knife handle. Would my wife's food dehydrator work for drying out this wood?
 
I don't know exactly how a food dehydrator works. I guess its a possibility. If there is heat involved you need to be sure that its not enough to burn the wood.
Basically any way that you can expose the wood to dry air will work. If you can use a limited amount of heat like a kiln it will go faster. Remember that a rapid change in the moisture content of the wood will cause it to shrink and possibly warp and or crack. So you'll want to do what you can to prevent that (clamping, seal end grain etc.)
 
I ripped the wood into 3 chuncks,My father has coal hotwter heat.
The pipes in the basement stay warm I put them up there, they have been
there 2 weeks,I have a chunk that is warpping on me.I guess I can dip it in water and clamp in between somthing.:confused: :confused:
I hope, that chunk is not bad because it is a great looking.
 
I've tried many different fast drying techniques recommended by other and most have been a disaster. Best way that has worked for me ( for woods I send to be stabilized) is to cut them into handle sized blocks and then stack them with some spacers and a wieght on top. I leave this setup in a warm, dry location with good circulation for 2-4 weeks, depending on the initial mioisture.

Some of the best spalted wood I have found is really green - For that stuff, I go in stages because it can warp and check badly. I plastic bag it to keep the moisture in until I am ready to dry it. When I cut it up, I first give it some time in a damp enviroment (basement), checking the moisture and gradually shift it to a dryer area- its slow going but you get a better yield.

Bottom lime from my experience - and this is before I made knives - don't take a chance on rushing the drying process. My .02....

Bob
 
Did you know that there is much experimentation for drying wood in some sawmills using microwaves? Hey with the pieces you want to dry it works great. Allow over size and start with blocks say 1' wide and 5' long. Do not try to dry fast but start with a few minutes and keep turning up the time until the wood gets warm. Redry several times. With some woods you will see the block shrink in when the wood cells collapse. This works great even on wood just cut Frank.
 
Like Frank said. It's also important, if you are using an artificial heat source to dry, to use hot AND cold cycles. For some reason, it works way better than continous heat. I guess it's more like nature. Some woods can take up to 15 years to dry, on their own.:eek:. I was told to cut the wood into useable, but oversize blocks, then heat and let cool. Here is a link that explains it better than I can.

http://woodworkersworld.homestead.com/fall_2002_p1.html
Click on kiln drying.

http://woodworkersworld.homestead.com/spring02p1.html
 
Mike
Very interesting,I see they use heat boxes,My father makes long bows and he made somthing almost like that.He painted it black and sets the box outside in the summer and let it heat up ,he then takes
it and cools it.He does this several time.Seems to work for him.
But the only down fall is it can only be done in the summer:(
 
The dehydrator idea intrigues me now. Gonna have to bring mine back next time I drive home to parent's house. But a good dehydrator(and they can be found if you shop around. found never used $200 dehdyrator for $20 at resale shop) heats air up to 160 deg(there is a variable setting to control how hot) AND uses a fan/fans to help air circulation. So it seems to me this would work very well for faster drying of wood.
 
Nathan, try the old wood drying trick of an old refrigerator, with a 60- 100watt bulb in the bottom. Distribute the wood on the various racks. Just turn it off at night. The heat from the light bulb will help dry the wood.
Lots of people still use this method to dry wood. You can also make a container to do the same thing. It's just that you can usually get old refrigerators for nothing. just make sure to drill some holes near the top, and a few at the bottom for circulation. :eek: ;)
 
Mike
I seen a method like you are talking about in David Bowie's
book,that is somthing I may test out.
I have a dehydrator that I use for making deer jerky I wonder how long you would have to keep it in there inorder for it to work
I has 8 racks on it that are spaced apart,I keep deer jery in there
for about 6 hours to do a whole batch.Lots of testing to do.
Looks like I am in for some more fun makeing somthing.Man I love knife making,and to think I just about walked away form it.:D
It is in my blood now,I guess there is no turning back.:)
 
Hey fellows remember that a microwave works not from the outside in but all the way through to begin with. When I said to get the wood warm guess I meant hot. Rodger Hatt has done many knives from tree to cured in just a day or so . On hunters he often uses birch or alder burl.Frank
 
I've dried small pieces of green applewood in a microwave. Repeated cycles of 2-4 minutes on the lower settings until weight was constant. They warped and shrunk some. Seemed to work well.

Then I tried drying some loquat wood the same way in a different microwave. (First experiment was at a relative's house) I made charcoal in the center of the pieces and my oven still smells a little like a smokehouse when used. The wood was warm, but not hot on the outside.

I can tell that the lower settings on my oven mean that full power is used, but pulsed. Dunno about my relative's oven. But on some machines, the lower settings actually mean that a less intense microwave field is produced, as opposed to pulsing a full-intensity one. I suspect that this may make a big difference in how evenly and how much the interior heats. Also, my oven doesn't have a rotating table inside, which probably also makes a significant difference, even though I did turn and move the wood around after each cycle.

I seem to be having better luck with my oven by using one or two 2-3 minute cycles, then letting the wood sit for a day and repeating for a week or so. I wax the endgrain, as I got a few shallow cracks without--seems to help. I've only done a few pieces, so not much data, and I'm sure somebody has figured it out better than me.

YMMV.
 
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