A year ago Thanksgiving weekend i cut two separate dead red oaks at my GF's moms place two driveways up from us. Ive Fallen and i Cant Get Up! Are You Feeling Lucky, Punk? Were the threads. I cur and split them right away and since they were in the woods i left them to dry...one mounded the other stacked on sleepers. I was there to clean her gutters the other day and grabbed an average split to check internal moisture content. One was 22% the other 27%. I thought they'd be drier. The waiting game continues. Left split was 22%, right was 27% Pics are of splits PRIOR to splitting to check MC.
That is not surprising. Wood doesn't start to dry until it is split. To dry faster consider splitting in thinner pieces that resemble boards. This is about 6-7 months since split, drying nicely.
In the shade when leaves on trees decent breeze does blow through there. Can i drop them at your place and use your field Joe? How much is your wood storage fee? Wish i had a full sun exposure. The wood was split a year ago, stacked and mounded off ground. No top cover. Im in no rush. Ill pull them this Winter and stack in my PA.
Hey Brad! The only thing I'm surprised by is that.... you're surprised! Here is the Firewood BTU and Drying chart that shows Oak can take 36 months. I wonder if it is directly correlated to weight, or density, or it is a non-linear thing that is dependent on the species. My guess is that it has to be a function of species, or Osage Orange would take far longer than 12 months. My Oregon Oak is very slow to dry too. Stay warm and set it aside - I'm dead sure you have other stuff to burn! We "Flash Dried" a lot of timber this year out west....
And yet, it is common practice to stack and sticker whole logs when building a log cabin to dry the logs so that the majority of shrinkage attributed to drying happens in the stack, not in the cabin wall. Usually to about 20% in a year depending on the log species. And yet, many band sawmill millers won't mill old logs because they are too dry. Old logs being over 6 months to a year old. Imagine that. They must all be wrong.
I’m right in line with most of the sentiments above. No surprises to me. I typically let the first year of seasoning uncovered, then just a top cover. Your conditions where the wood sits dictates most of the speed with drying IMO. Put it in a somewhat damp basement, it isn’t going to move fast, let it sit in full sun with good wind, Yahtzee.
This has the makings for an interesting experiment. The next live oak I come across I'll save a 4' section of trunk and put it with the usual CSS wood from the same days cutting. Then, in 24 months, I'll buck the 4' chunk into three 16" rounds, split the middle one, whip out my trusty moisture meter, and we'll see just how things are drying. I think this would be a good thing to know... Maybe save 3 sections 4' long, then test out one each year for 3 years...
Exactly...kinda like everybody knows that pine will burn your house down if used for firewood...wrong.
Good old red oak, or in your case not old enough. When it's been given enough time under the right conditions, phenomenal firewood. I burned a couple 4 year old splits yesterday that I was thoroughly impressed with. Surface moisture seems to evaporate quickly but the grain itself is stubborn to lose those last few percentage points deep within. My guess is if you were to check splits that came from higher up in the tree, MAYBE those pieces would be drier but most likely still needing another year (or more).
Here was my fun (dead) oak experiment for the year, although I wouldn't dare suggest that it's a sure-fire way of cheating the drying time on Oak. Too many variables involved. I did end up with burnable wood inside a few months harvesting a tree that had been down and off the ground a few years. Going with small splits, drying in full sun, and keeping the rain off worked for me in this case but I won't stick my neck out and say this'll work consistently. Sub-Optimal Oak Experiment
i love red oak firewood but the thing i learned about em is that u kinda have css everything right away or at least asap to give it a chance to dry out
I'm testing the drying time of oak that I split last August.I have a cord of oak covered about two thirds of the way with rubber roofing.I'll burn a small bit on a chilly May day,and some next September God willing and see what happens.
I had a red oak cutdown in Jan 2017 and I c/s/s it in Feb/March/April 2017. I am burning the last of it now in my fireplace and every now and again I get a split that hisses out some moisture.
