Lumber Drying-Solar Kiln Seminar

[JackLeg]

Attending this seminar at VT. Took me about 1 hour this morning to realize how very little I know about lumber, drying, make up, etc.
These instructors are excellent!

So far, we've learned about different species and their make up, total MC of different woods, (can you believe that 1000 bf of green wood, 70% moisture, contains 275 gallons of water? A ton of moisture!)

Visited the Brooks Forestry Lab this afternoon. This is definitely worth the money and time. Many in the class are sawyers. Attendee's from VA, NC, SC, MI, Montreal, KY.

Class all day tomorrow. Glad I came.

[woodArtz]

Cool stuff Reggie! Sounds like your havin' fun .

[TBone]

That would be very interesting. Thanks for the update. A ton of water?

Originally Posted by JackLeg

So far, we've learned about different species and their make up, total MC of different woods, (can you believe that 1000 bf of green wood, 70% moisture, contains 275 gallons of water? A ton of moisture!)

Yep I believe it - there is a noticable weight difffernce in green / dry lumber.

Take a 36" diameter by 16' long White oak log - it'll saw out about 1000BF of lumber and weighs approx 7200LBS. The 1000 BF of green lumber that comes off the same white oak log will weight about 5500 LBS but kiln dried to 6 ~ 8% MC the same lumber would weigh around 3200. That's a little over a ton of water. White oak is one of the more wetter / heavier woods. Lumber like ERC or poplar is much lighter.

I don't know for sure and never weighed myself - but I've been told by people that move a lot of green lumber that an average of 5lbs per BF for lumber and 7lbs per doyle scaled BF for logs is a good rule of thumb to go by. I would think 3lbs per BF of kiln dired lumber would be a good rule of thumb but I'm not sure cause I just made that up

Jack you and your dodge just ain't done no work till you white knuckle a couple of 1000+ BF loads of logs. Ask Jack he'll tell you... I've seen his trailer loaded down with some nice sided loads out at Kevin's - I know he must have been white knuckling a little...

Thanks

[JackLeg]

I think any sawyer or anyone who plans to handle green lumber would greatly benefit from this class.

So far we have spent our time on learning proper methods of stacking for air drying, log attrib;utes, log storage, how water moves in wood, stresses in logs and lumber, moisture content and measurement, .

Today we get to the different types of kilns, operation techniques, how to avoid drying defects, drying turning blanks, thick lumber, insect control, setting pitch, etc.

Gotta go.

The student.

Oh yeah, Jeff, a man's gotta know his limitations. And I know the limitations of that Dodge!!