Update:
Sold approximately 10% of my stock with a couple of customers coming this week. Also, next Friday is the start of the Scottish Furniture Makers Association Exhibition in Edinburgh, to which I'm invited to the private first viewing. Plenty of business cards and stock lists are going to be handed out to the 50 or so furniture makers who are exhibiting.
I have been doing a lot of milling this last week, which has been lovely after a period of relative inactivity on that front. All Oak, some wonderfully pippy stuff, some small stuff for the local church lectern and a beautifully curved section for a green Oak bridge.
I'm also really excited about getting the new kiln load up and running. I've had to change my set up a little due to the aforementioned dehumidifier suicide, but I think the change is for the better.
I've ended up with an Ebac BD150 dehumidifier. I thought that I would need two in the kiln reading the extraction stats, but putting it in to just bring the last lot of timber down from 15% MC to 10%, it was extracting twice what it said it should. So only one needed. Similarly, the heat it produces is huge, resulting in the need for an extractor fan (previously closed system with only moisture removal coming from dehumidification) as the dehumidifier shuts off above 35 degrees C. No bad thing really, as Oak can honeycomb above that.
Also, as airflow was a bit of an issue in the previous load, bought a snail fan (carpet dryer) locally for £50. It pumps out at least 20 times as much air as a standard 10" fan and is amply sufficient for the whole kiln.
Anyway, I've yet to finish the set up for the new kiln fully, but I'll post some photos and diagrams of it once it's done - might help someone else avoid the mistakes made in the first run.
Regarding stock for the next kiln, it's almost all going to be Oak at this point. I have a beast of a log to mill - 27ft long at an average 3 foot diameter, which will fill most of the 250 cubic foot capacity. Beyond that there are some other random bits and bobs going in too.
Jonathan