My neighbor took down a nice tree recently, and from it I have six hard-won slabs about 7' long, 2' wide and 2 1/4"" thick. They're very heavy, and I found four different steel hooks along the way, so I'd rather not waste the ruined chain and all the effort. Does anyone here have experience drying white oak, in particular? Currently it's stacked on my deck with poplar stickers, an OSB roof overhanging 6" all around and three coats of paint on the ends. It's on northeast corner of the house and gets only a smidgen of sun each morning, but it's right in the path of the prevailing winds. Last year, in late summer, I cut several similar slabs of honeylocust and dried them on the other side of the deck, with fewer coats of paint on the ends, a smaller overhang on the roof, and more sun. I got a good amount of usable lumber from those, but there were more checks and cracks than I hoped for. I'd like to do better this time.
Looks and sounds pretty good to me. Does the cracked piece contain any pith, or is it adjacent to it? That's where I see most of my cracking. If I have to leave it in there, I prefer to release that tension by resawing through the pith - I like to saw through it 2 ways if possible. I have an entire textbook on the subject of drying lumber, but I've mostly flown by the seat of my pants. What I do has been working for me but your mileage may vary - it's probably best to adhere to all lumber drying wisdom, and only omit steps as you learn through experience how necessary they are for your situation. I almost never seal the ends, but my ends almost never see the sun. A lot of checking and cracking occurs when the outside of the piece dries faster than the inside. All of my lumber gets stacked in my wooden, un-insulated garage, out of the sun; and it all seems to dry quite evenly. Stacked outside, not under a roof, I think there is a much higher danger of the 'case hardening' which leads to so much cracking. If it is seeing some sun, I think I might want more overhang. If you're going to omit the weights, I'd want that smaller piece on the bottom, as they are more prone to twist in my experience, and extra weight will help to prevent that. Seems we all know how to dry firewood pretty good here right? Drying lumber isn't too much different. mike bayerl also has a lot of lumber drying knowledge as well.
Thanks, Shawn. I've read a bit about commercial and solar kiln drying, but those methods grant you so much more control over the drying environment. Having it out in the breeze makes me nervous, but it's too soon to think about putting it in the garage. Last time I did that with some fresh-cut firewood (also white oak), I was shocked at how much humidity it dumped into the air. The walls were practically dripping for weeks. The friend who helped me with the sawing, who took three more similar slabs, mentioned that he has a bunch of some kind of perforated industrial filter material. (I think he has the slab containing the pith, too.) We speculated about maybe wrapping the stack in that stuff, to slow down the initial stages of drying. Years ago made the mistake of reducing air flow too much on a stack of thick-cut sycamore, and ended up with a lot of unintentional spalting. Seems to be a tricky balance, at least for some species. I'm hoping that the impending cool weather will moderate things for the first several months, too.
Oh, one other suggestion I forgot to mention earlier. I've never dried any oak but I know it contains lots of tannins which can get drawn out when in contact with moisture. How dry are those stickers? One technique for limiting the wood to wood contact is to put a "hollow" profile on the stickers, so they only contact the lumber at 2 narrow points.
The stickers are very dry, and too small to meaningfully cove out that way. I've seen the same idea. I might shift them an inch or two after a few weeks.
White oak is very tough to dry without some defects. Event the "experts" can have trouble, so don't blame yourself if you get less than perfect results. I think you have a good start with shade, airflow and covering from rain. You might try to put some stickers out at the very ends of the boards. Also, you should consider putting some weight on top, at least on the ends and the middle. I have been very successful with putting a row of cinder blocks over the stickers. As above, I tend to rip the pith out. It's going to crack or be a major weakness anyway. But it's not the end of the world to leave it in during drying and rip it out later.
The first big stack of lumber I dried - 1250 bf of 4/4 red oak - I put in our pole barn, clised the doors and left town for a week. As with you, everything in the barn was soaked. The acids from the wood rusted/corroded every bit exposed metal. The wood worked out fine in the end though.
The wood has been stacked about a week and a half at this point, and I'm already seeing a lot of shallow surface checks on the top two boards. We're having a warm spell, too, which of course won't help. Clearly the wood surface is drying too quickly, but I don't have any great ideas for slowing it down, short of painting entire planks...
Think firewood. I recall you having some nice stacks; in, around, or under your porch. Where does the wood dry the fastest? Where does it dry the slowest? If you want to slow the drying down, let that be a guide. I'd try underneath your porch up on cinder blocks or something. Good luck.
You can try wrapping the stack in burlap (available cheap at any big box) to decrease the breeze and sunlight. You don't want it touching the wood, just draped a couple inches away. Again, white oak is one of the very hardest native woods to dry, so expect some degrade.
The burlap looks like a good idea. I read about some commercial products that do the same sort of job, but I suspect they're hard to get in small quantities. For the moment I've placed a piece of plywood as a temporary wall on the windward side of the stack, to reduce air flow.
I'm seeing why air-drying might be challenging to get good at. There are so many variables that are difficult to isolate, and each attempt takes such a long time before you have meaningful results to react to.
It can be very complex if you are into high volume production, but for us backyard hacks, it doesn't need to be too complicated. Try some walnut or poplar. You practically can't misd with them.
Walnut, maybe, though I don't see too many. Poplars are surprisingly uncommon in my immediate vicinity too, and besides, commercial poplar lumber is cheap. We have oodles of cherry, black locust, red oak, various soft maples and assorted ornamentals. I don't have much space to devote to drying lumber, so I'd like to focus on the more unusual finds rather than stuff I can easily buy when I need it. Realistically, I'll probably only saw and dry one or two logs a year, whenever attractive opportunities crop up.
Sounds good. We have tons of big tulip trees here. I used to just let them rot too, since retail lumber is cheap. However this spring I had a guy with a Woodmizer come and saw up some tulip poplars. I put it on sticks, and now I'm using it for framing and siding for a little sheep barn. In bulk like this, it's WAY cheaper than lumber yard lumber.
Using lumber you made yourself takes the project to another level of satisfaction. Hard to put a price tag on that sort of thing. Heating my house with firewood might not be the most economical means either. But I like doing it that way.
I would wrap it with landscape fabric maybe even a tarp until the weather improves. It looks like you have a bunch of airflow even from underneath. I'll saw several logs, do this and that get busy pack up and not have time to move them to a good drying spot for sometimes a week or two. The lumber closest to the ground is the unaffected by this. As I go up the stack more defects are obvious because they dry too fast even in the shade covered with a tarp. A tarp can screw you as it won't let enough moisture out and mold. I always always advise low and slow especially on slabs. On most species the initial drying is the hardest on it. (Right now for you) I try to save the nice stuff to saw for the fall because it dries the easiest.
I wrapped it in some spun nylon fabric that my friend offered. It's similar to landscape fabric except it's white, which might help a bit by reflecting more sunlight. Considering a tarp, too. Thanks for the advice.
