Last month to process logs to sell this coming Winter ?

[farmer rod]

Brilliant work, are you going to put them in the oven eventually?

[matelot]

Latest weighing, you can see how drying slowed in the wet part of the summer and now weights are on their way up again. Pine seems to be most sensitive to ambient humidity

 

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I think a lot of people here have noticed how wood that is completely soaked with water seems to dry faster than wood that is partially dry.

 

It could be an interesting experiment to see how quickly wood dries after two weeks in a pond? It is possible that when wood is saturated the sticky stuff in wood is washed out and it's easier to dry.

[timbernut]

I think a lot of people here have noticed how wood that is completely soaked with water seems to dry faster than wood that is partially dry.

 

 

 

It could be an interesting experiment to see how quickly wood dries after two weeks in a pond? It is possible that when wood is saturated the sticky stuff in wood is washed out and it's easier to dry.

 

 

I've read that as, in particular, was put in running water (river/stream) to season it quickly and years ago met a horse drawn traveller who had shafts made with young, summer cut, ash that he'd bent to shape in a form and slung in stream for a couple of weeks and when they came out they kept the correct shape, they were very strong and much more flexible than sawn shafts

[openspaceman]

Brilliant work, are you going to put them in the oven eventually?

 

I will try and dry them this weekend. I also intend to pull a piece of ash from my wood stack and dry that.

 

My reasoning is that my logs, dried on a shelf in my acrylic corrugated roofed workshop will bear little relationship to the log in the stack where the air flow is limited.

 

I haven't found my results from where I had a straight through air flow from a pc fan blowing over a 40W light bulb onto a birch pole cut into 6 150mm long pieces so I may run that one again.

[openspaceman]

I think a lot of people here have noticed how wood that is completely soaked with water seems to dry faster than wood that is partially dry.

 

I've seen that said here but not observed it.

It could be an interesting experiment to see how quickly wood dries after two weeks in a pond? It is possible that when wood is saturated the sticky stuff in wood is washed out and it's easier to dry.

 

I'm certain the initial moisture content will increase as air from the wood diffuses into the water. As this happens the log gets heavier and eventually sinks (actually depending on time of year oak and beech sink anyway).

 

I do think it likely some sugars are leached out of the wood and thus possibly make it less attractive to bugs.

[carpenter1]

If I split some cordwood say today at 35% moisture how long do you reckon until its about 20%, say a mix of hard and soft. Sorted undercover but lots of through air.

I have enough for this years sales I hope. Just considering if its worth doing 20m3 for say late February early march just in case. I want a quality product so would rather say I have not got any than sell at a higher percentage.

[openspaceman]

If I split some cordwood say today at 35% moisture how long do you reckon until its about 20%, say a mix of hard and soft. Sorted undercover but lots of through air.

I have enough for this years sales I hope. Just considering if its worth doing 20m3 for say late February early march just in case. I want a quality product so would rather say I have not got any than sell at a higher percentage.

 

Perceived wisdom is that you get little drying between October and April because not only does the cold weather reduce the capacity of the air to remove moisture but moisture migrates through the log slowly.

 

My experiment seems to show that in the early stages at least in summer temperatures, the water migrating through the wood is not slow enough to limit the air removing it from the surface. I may try and repeat the experiment if I get some fresh felled wood.

 

If you can arrange enough air flow and prevent re wetting then the wood will gradually dry in a winter. The thing is in general using a fan energy to move the air is too costly unless it is preheated.

[openspaceman]

I've dried them in the oven and an ash log out of the middle of my uncovered log stack at home. This last was interesting as it had only dried to 27.5%mc in the summer yet the one in my workshop in open air had got down to 14% in the same period, a good case for a loosely stacked and covered store.

 

Anyway please see final graph below, it differs from the last one in that I have referred all the figures back to moisture content in %. You will note the slower drying in the wet bit of August and how moisture content has started rising in all but the oak and elm after October.

 

The reason it doesn't quite match with my earlier offering is that the initial moisture contents were higher than I allowed for, I guestimated them from the FC mensuration handbook (39). This is not surprising as we all know from reading that lover of Norwegian folk music that moisture content varies with which part of the tree the wood came from but more importantly with the season, these logs were summer felled so one would expect the sap to be at its highest.

 

[Typhke]

Interesting results. Thanks for putting all the work in, really enjoy following the process!

[openspaceman]

 

 

Further to the above graph I've shown another pine log and the two logs that didn't get burned at Xmas absorbing moisture. I've run a short experiment with attempting to dry a log under the same conditions in winter, it's a bit unfair as my workshop is attached to the house so some heat will get through the kitchen wall plus of course it has been exceptionally warm and dry in all but the last few days down here.

 

Underneath I have rejigged the graph to compare the summer drying of pine in days albeit 6 months apart. I was surprised that it dried as much in winter as it did, given the caveats above, but it looks like whilst the summer dried log was basically okay to burn at day 25 around 20% the winter drying if it continued would take 5 to 6 times as long.

 

Whilst it wouldn't be wise to use this as a means to getting wood ready to sell it probably makes it worthwhile to carry on splitting and preparing if no other work is profitable and covered space available, although I did notice some bluestain on the pine log so it wasn't drying fast enough to prevent fungal attack.

 

I still need to do the forced dryer experiment but back to work on Monday

 

PS images are blurred as whilst uploaded as a graphics file the site hosts them as jpegs