Big J

Here is a short video explaining the kiln: I wasn't able to get the bloody firewood in today, despite my best efforts. The crates I have (constructed from pallets) and for the most part unsuitable for use with a pallet truck so I need to have a little think about how to do it. Jonathan

I will do a quick video tour of the kiln instead of photos as it seems simpler and quicker. I'm putting some firewood in today, so I'll report back as soon as I can.

Yep, unless stored in a humidity controlled environment, they will take on moisture. The above guide is meant primarily for sawn timber. The firewood aspect is just a bonus really. The advantage of the kiln is that I think that I can get near enough green timber down to 25% in two weeks. Takes a year to do that air drying.

You can have an inconsistent heat source if you are producing firewood but not for sawn timber. The fluctuations in temperature (and therefor humidity) with cause too much defect in the timber. But for firewood, I'd say go for it!

Forgot to mention timescales: * Air dried sawn hardwood should take about 4-6 weeks, green 7-9 weeks. I'd always advise air drying even if you can only manage 3-6 months - the difference in quality is huge. It also saves electricity - the kiln costs about £8 a day to run. * Firewood - not sure yet as I'm only just doing this now, but less than two weeks I'd imagine. Firewood will give up it's moisture far quicker due to proportionally higher surface area and higher temperature afforded by not giving a monkeys about defects!

It's about time that I started a thread as a guide for people out there wanting to build a kiln on a budget. I have run about 8-9 kiln loads of timber through mine now, making small and large changes on the way. The system that I have now I am very happy with and would whole heartedly recommend. Shopping list for building your kiln: * 18-20ft insulated lorry back (or insulated shipping container, though they are considerably more expensive). Best place to get one is a commercial vehicle breakers, or a company that runs a large commercial hire fleet including refrigerated lorries. You really need at least two - one as a kiln and one as storage for when the kiln opens. When the kiln first opens, it will fill both the kiln and the storage box, as you want to be able to access the timber for sales. Aim to pay about £500 for each box, though expect to pay more and don't take anything on that isn't in good condition, as they degrade reasonably quickly as kilns. * Heat recovery unit - I use a Vent Axia unit that extracts roughly 200 cubic metres of air an hour. This is about right for a kiln of this size. I got mine off ebay almost new for £290 delivered. You will need 100mm ducting to go with it, which is very cheap. * Heaters - you need to have 2-3kw of heating in the kiln. I use oil filled radiators and they are fine and cheap. A more expensive but more convenient option are tube heaters, as they can be mounted just under the roof and are therefor out of the way. You need a plug in thermostat (£20 or less) to control the heaters too. * Large fan - I use a carpet dryer, which I regard as being the best fan for the job. It is around 850w, moves over 3000 cubic metres of air an hour in quite a well directed manner. It's also very compact. * Cheap weather station - you need to buy one with indoor/outdoor temperature and humidity. It lives in your storage box, and looking at it you will know exactly what the kiln is doing by the temp/relative humidity. That is it for the shopping list. Now for setup: * Make sure that the box is very well supported from underneath. There could be 8 tonnes of timber going into it green, and it doesn't matter how strong the box is, it will still deform to some degree. Bear in mind that any deviation from straight in the floor is mirrored in the timber, resulting in boards that are not flat. * Mount the heat recover unit just under the roof inside close to the far end. Two pipes go outside and you want those to be as short as possible (to avoid condensation forming in the outflow pipe as the air is heavy with moisture and has been cooled by the air coming in). Pipe the air inflow outlet to the other end of the box and have the air outflow inlet right at the heat recovery unit. This will be much clearer when I get the photos up. Basically, you want the dry air piped to one end, and the wet air collected at the other. Your heat recovery unit comes with a condensate pipe - pipe that outside. * Mount the heaters just under the roof if using tube heaters, or sit the heaters adjacent to the fan if using oil filled radiators. Set your thermostat to about 32 celcius if drying sawn timber, or 38 if drying firewood (you can cook firewood as hot as you like, but most electrical gear like the fan and heat recovery unit aren't guaranteed past 40 celcius). * Place the carpet drying fan in the middle of the box on the left side with the outlet facing up. This will collect the newly heated air (if using oil filled radiators) or will direct the air towards the heaters (if using tube heaters). I have a small plywood splitter directly above the fan directing the air to all corners of the box. * If drying sawn timber, screw bearers (I used 38x38mm) to the floor at 18 inch intervals. Ensure that they are accurate as they are the bearers you will use to stack your stack. To aid accurate stacking as the stack gets higher, I have lines penned onto the wall to indicate exactly where the bearer on the floor is. You need to have perfectly vertical sticker lines for straight timber. It's something I am very anal about. * Put your sensor for your weather station on the opposite side of the box to the fan, halfway up the wall. That's set up - now for usage guidelines: * Timber stacking. As previously mentioned, accurate stickering is crucial. Don't cut corners on this. When stacking, stack from floor to 1ft from the ceiling. Leave an unobstructed 1ft gap on the right side (far side from the fan) and 18 inches on the near side, where your electrical control equipment is. You would be surprised how often you might want access. 1ft is too narrow for most whilst 18 inches is OK. This will give you a 5ft wide stack if using a lorry back. Make sure when stacking that the sides of the stack are as straight as possible, with no stickers protruding past the edge of the stack and that all stickers and timber are supported. It's much better to have unsupported stickers in the middle of the stack than unsupported ends of stickers. You would be amazed how easily timber deforms if given the opportunity. Try to fill the kiln end to end as well, leaving no gaps at the end. My box is 18ft - I have two 9ft stacks for simplicity. * Turn everything on and close the doors. With the thermostat set at 32 celcius, the temperature will vary between 30 and 34 depending on external conditions. More important than temperature is the relative humidity (RH). The RH will sit at around 83% for the first couple of weeks of the cycle and then start to drop steadily at 1-2 percentage points per day. Once the RH reaches 20-25%, at least 95% of your timber will be ready. Obviously, mixing species and thicknesses complicates things, but it's almost always accurate. My last kiln opened yesterday and was showing 23% RH prior to opening. The driest timber was the elm at 7% and the wettest some stubborn 2 1/4 inch oak at 18%. Oak is notoriously hard to dry though. It was a kiln of predominantly 1 and 1.5 inch timber though, hence the higher reading on the thicker Oak. * Timber storage - just make sure that your timber storage box is either heated or dehumidified. To figure out what moisture content your timber will settle at, type in equilibrium moisture content calculator into google, and type in your temperature and RH. You want to control the environment so that your EMC is less than 12%. * Firewood - for firewood drying, don't screw down the stickers so you have a flat floor. Best suggestion is forklift a couple of metre cube crates into the entrance. Then use a pallet truck to wheel them to the back and repeat. I'm going to be testing this tomorrow for the first time so I'm sorry that I cannot say any more! Use a higher temperature (38c) and you won't need to go as low as 25% on the RH. 50% would probably suffice to get it to 20-25%. Hope that helps more people to get kiln drying - it's really simple and well worth doing. Timber is quite hard to shift unless it's ready to use, and air drying can only do so much. I might actually do a short video to explain the kiln tomorrow.

No need to buy an off the shelf kiln. DIY kiln construction is very easy - I'll post a thread in the sawmilling section now detailing it....

Have you considered setting up a kiln to dry some of your timber as a premium product? I'm not for one second saying that kiln dried is necessarily better, but people are prepared to pay quite a bit more. You can get a kiln that will dry air dried firewood to sub 15% in about a week or ten days set up for less than a grand. Electricity costs are less than £10 a cubic metre and you could charge £40-50 more a cube. Just an idea to expand sales. I'm putting some fairly green firewood into my kiln for the first time tomorrow so I'll report back!

Used about 9 cubic metres stacked so far this winter. September and October were fairly cold though, so the Rayburn has been on continuously (more or less). No shortage of firewood though - about another 11 cubic metres waiting at the front door, with about the half that again in the round (15 month seasoned cherry) in the garden. If we get some sort of epic cold snap and I somehow get through all that, I can get 8 cubic metres dry every 2 weeks in the kiln at the yard!

Rob - can't really leave the business for that amount of time unfortunately! It would need to be a clean break kind of thing. My uncle was suggesting building up contacts through timber export - there are a number of species that we have here that they don't there. I could continue with that once we had moved there. The lack of coastline is a plus for me. Can't bear the maritime climate - looking at the weather forecast for the house that I linked to, it's minus 2 to minus 12 the next 10 days. Not a hint of rain. TCD and Minataur - good points! It is always a very nice place to visit, with everyone friendly and keen to use their English. Treepeeat - the house linked requires only one bathroom finishing (and possibly the hideous main bathroom pulling out - it's strange that the rest of the house is quite nice and then there was a complete lapse in good taste there!). My wife is an architect, so getting to grips with regs (albeit in another language) should be fine. I suspect that as I would be working by myself on the Woodmizer (or equivalent), I might not need tickets. Certainly worth investigating though. Here is another house, this time in Thuringia (forested mountain chain) which is further east and south. Tell me that isn't a picture postcard of a house! For reference, it's got a biomass boiler system and it's also about £48000 Ländliches Einfamilienhaus / Thüringer Bauernhaus Haus Döschnitz (2UL9L3G) Jonathan

Yep - I'm on granberg chains too. I've tried all sorts - best is granberg, the worst skip link oregon. Elm is usually very good to mill - fairly soft and sometimes quite a pleasant aroma. My day rate is £200 plus VAT for chain milling if that's any use for a basis for comparison. That's just me and the chainsawmill though - any labour/stickers etc are extra.

Fabulous coloured stuff and very good chain milling - very little scoring.

Just wondering if anyone on here has any experience working in Germany? I'm half German and speak the language pretty fluently, and it's always been at the back of my mind to move there. There are many good reasons, including: * 33% forest cover in Germany * Better standard of living * Potential kids grow up bilingual * Much better climate * Houses are incredibly cheap On that last point, here is an example of what about £50,000 gets you: Renoviertes Bauernhaus mit Stall und Scheune Bauernhaus Niederhosenbach (2HHGQ33) That's near to Trier, half way down Germany near to Luxembourg. I have family there. Just wondering if anyone has worked there and how they found it. The impression I get is that the quality of work will generally be higher as they are trained for far longer before being let loose in the forest. I suspect the sawmilling would be easier to get into. I'm just sick of the rain, over inflated property prices, the grim Scottish architecture and neds! Jonathan

Very sorry to hear about the 090 and 076 Alec.

I have no complaints - the scrub regeneration elm makes the best firewood I know of. Nothing else lasts as long overnight.

The Alaskan isn't fuel efficient in any guise really. Cutting at 2 inches thick, you will use about 1 litre per 5 cubic foot of timber in hardwood (my experience). If fuel efficiency is your goal, get a diesel powered bandmill. Despite having 4 times the power of the 088, the Woodmizer will cut about 10-12 cubic foot per litre of diesel. In addition to that, there are no oil costs and the red diesel is half the price. So it works out about 5-6 times cheaper once you've taken into account the 2 stroke oil. Then factor in the fact that you are losing 7.5mm more kerf on each cut and the number stack up against the chainsaw. However, as a foothold for sawmilling, halving large logs and those rare and wonderful beasts of logs, the Alaskan is invaluable.

Woooo! Bring it on! Many thanks sir.

Can't emphasise enough how important a woodburner is for someone in our line of work. You effectively have a free source of heat that will give you heat reliably with absolutely nothing to break down, be affected by power cuts of fuel shortages. We burn 3 stacked cubic metres a month at present, but our (old single story badly insulated) cottage is too warm to wear trousers most of the time. Living room presently 21 celcius, 35% RH. Minus 5 outside. Rayburn on and directing heat around the house with a little to the living room. Villager stove on very low in living room mostly for the benefit of the dogs!

From our (arborist types) point of view, the greys are terrible. They have done huge and extensive damage to the younger trees here on the estate, particularly sycamore and oak. To the best of my knowledge, the reds do not bark strip to anywhere near the same degree. Native or non native, cute or not, this is the single biggest reason to control them. What is the point in planting, pruning and thinning if your crop is going to be destroyed by a fluffy tailed rat?

Situation resolved. Speaking to the forestry foreman, so long as we have chainsaws on site, are wearing the correct PPE and use the chainsaws occasionally (for removing failing/undesirable trees) we should be OK. The whole situation is bloody stupid if you ask me as it's an exercise in legislative compliance rather than best practice, but I suppose hoops are there to be jumped through.

Lightly snowing, though on the cusp of rain. Not much more than a centimetre on the deck though. We get less snow than anyone else around here, so everywhere else will have had more.

Certainly interesting - not too much star shake, though a bit gnarly. Good proportion of heart wood though, which makes it more valuable. £300-400 would be my offer. Possibly more, though not exceeding £500.

I get quite a few enquiries through the site. The training and contacts are the best thing though as you'll find work is passed your way (and vise versa) if other mills can't accommodate. I've had more work that way than through the site. Either way, it's a small amount of money to be part of a trade association that do good work and benefits it's members.

Need to see pictures really, including both top and bottom and both sides. If there is little heartwood, firewood prices, if it's clean, straight with lots of heartwood and no shake, £30 a hoppus or more. It's a very wide range.

All the best with that. Perhaps the best advertising you can do is join the Association of Scottish Hardwood Sawmillers (ashs.co.uk). Annual membership is £100 and I get many times that amount in business, as well as lots of useful contacts and training days. Jonathan