New Old Digs

Time marches on. Don't waste it assuming you'll always have more.

Dr. Z

Some of you may have known but for the last 15 years I have been running dry kilns and a solid fuel low pressure boiler.  Above you can see the boiler house.

Here's one way to bend wood. This birch board fell out of a pack and was placed under the third pack.  As the wood dried it of course shrank and in doing so the board was bent.  Gives you an idea how much wood moves when it dries.

Above you can see the moisture meter I use to check the progress of the drying.  

Above you can see the control panel for one of the kilns.  Below is the write up of the schedule I run to dry birch and maple.  The air temp. is called the dry bulb and the humidity level is called the wet bulb.  These two values are relatively close initially and pull apart as the wood dries. Otherwise the wood would dry too quickly at first and the wood would split and develop stresses. 

Below a better look at the controller.  This one is a Partlow two pen ( top value is the dry bulb and the bottom one is the wet bulb) circle chart.  It tracks the progress of the wood as it dries.  While I never really wanted to run dry kilns per se, it has allowed me to learn how wood dries and how to use that  to my advantage when building chairs.