Help with drying Red Maple

[fdfrye]

Hello all,

I recently salvaged two logs from my golf course. My father has been the Superintendent of the course for 24 years, and may retire soon, so I wanted to make him a keepsake from some of the wood.

I had a local sawyer help with the milling yesterday afternoon. The yield was "roughly" 26 - 11" wide boards. The boards are all just about 9.66 ft. long. It was sawed at 4/4. By my calculations, that is over 200 bd. ft.

I had no stickers, and wanted to get it stacked quick. I used a friends radial arm saw on the way home with the wood to cross cut one of my 11" wide boards into 100 - 11" x 1" x 1" stickers.

I now have all this wood stacked in my one-car garage (near one cinderblock wall), using those green stickers from the same red maple.

I used 3 stickers per layer (one in the middle, and one about 3-5 inches in from each end) while stacking.

The bottom layer is sitting on the three stickers only giving my 1" clearance from the concrete slab.

I know this whole process is incorrect. I do not own a moisture meter. I am not sure what effects my HVAC has on my garage, but it is always an intermediate temperature between the outdoors and the inside (meaning it has some heating and cooling going on).

I am in no hurry to dry the wood, but don't want to ruin anything. I have access to a dehumidifier and have considered running it full-time in the garage with the wood for a while.

I have not painted the ends of the boards to prevent checking as I do not know if the paint lying around my house will work. I can buy something appropriate if there is a good recommendation.

I can upload pictures if necessary, but would like some rudimentary advice. I live in Winston-Salem and don't know of any good local resources for this sort of thing.

Thanks for any and all help,
Danny

[DaveO]

Hey Danny, you've done better than worse. Ideally you would want your stickers placed about 16" apart and directly on top of each other between the boards. I am not sure if it would be problematic to use green stickers of the same species as the boards. I have always heard and used dry stock for the stickers. It could be a simple as some pine or Plywood scrap. Also it wouldn't hurt to place some ratchet straps around the stack over the stickers to help restrain the wood as it dries.
Even at this point it would be adventitious to coat the end grain with something to slow moisture loss. Anchorseal http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=20588 should be available at your local Woodcraft or on-line. But several liberal coatings of latex paint is better than nothing...I like PEACH
Also it would be helpfully to get the stack higher off the concrete floor. Concrete really moves moisture and the bottom might stay wetter than the top. Air flow is going to be your friend. If your garage is attached to the HVAC system of the house it should stay at a good humidity level to dry the wood, and air flow will help speed it up. I have a similar situation going on in my shop. A stack of green Cherry stacked and stickered. Several fans blowing across it and a dehumidifier that runs sometime (it's not working very well lately). I haven't checked the MC of the wood lately, but I hope to be able to use it this fall (bought it this spring).
Good luck and I hope to see what you create out of this wood.
Dave

[Tarhead]

Hi Danny,
Probably want to have a sticker every 16 to 24 inch through the stack. Anchorseal is the best for the ends but any latex paint will help slow down the water loss. If you see some end checking go ahead and drill a 1/4" hole through the board at the beginning of the split to help stop it from going deeper into the board. If you can put some ratchet straps on the stack ~ every other/every 3rd sticker and keep them tight you may have less twisting/warping. A fan blowing through the stack will help prevent mold/mildew and speed up drying somewhat. Check your wood for bugs as Red Maple is candy for some of them.
There are a few folks here who operate kilns and may be able to take care of all of this for a reasonable price.

[Gofor]

I am still in the process of cutting up some red oak logs downed 2 years ago. The wood is still very wet, and I have run into some problems that I will share. These are rough cut with a chain saw:

1st: The Sealtite from Klingspors works very well to prevent end grain splitting (1 liberal coat) on both the logs and the boards. (I haven't tried Anchorseal and do not know the price comparison, but the Sealtite works)

2nd: Rough cut logs (12 x 12 and 8 x 12) started checkering on the sides within 2 days even when moved directly into my unclimate-controlled garage (drying too fast).

3rd, 6/4 quarter-sawn boards cut with the bandsaw and run through a planer the same day as they were roughed out show no signs of checkering. (1" dry pine stickers every 16")

For what its worth

Go

[fdfrye]

I am going to run by klingspors tomorrow to grab the sealtite (not a close Woodcraft.) I want to go ahead and paint the ends. While I am out I will pick up some ratchet straps. I want to find some dry stickers and re-sticker everything with a better interval like every 16". I am also probably going to use some 4 x 4s and some 2 x 4s to try and get the base layer of my stack about 6" off the concrete. My boards are like 9'8" so, I will probably just do a sticker on each end and then 5 evenly space through the middle section. My stack is 26 layers tall right now, that means I would need 7 ratchet straps, and 7 x 25 = 175 stickers, yikes! Anyone know where I can get these?! Also, as for the bugs...I haven't seen anything crawling around my garage. They would have been trapped in there all day while I was at work today. Can you guys be more specific about how to check for/remove bugs?

As for the drying, I won't really be able to keep any fans blowing on the stack. i am a little worried about having the back of the stack almost against the cinderblock wall...but I can't afford to let it hang out into the garage anymore than that. Wood the dehumidifier do anything If I put it within a few feet of the stack? Wood it just be sucking in moisure from underneath my garage door (even though I have some pretty nice weatherstripping)?

[scsmith42]

Hi Danny. There has been some good advice offered by others already. Here is my 2 cents.

1 - Use dry stickers, no less than 3/4" square. I prefer 1" for air drying but 3/4" works well in the kiln.

2 - A hardwood such as oak is best, and cedar also works well. Pine may cause some sticker stain between the sticker and the board.

3 - Air flow helps significantly. The distance from your pile to the wall should be at least equal to the total thickness of all of your stickers. As an example, if you use stickers that are 1" thick, and you have 30 layers in your stack, then you will want at least 30" of clearance between your stack and the wall.

4 - Too much air flow will damage the wood. Around 300 CFM is about right.

5 - When you're ready to apply end sealer, if the ends of your boards have already started to check take the time to slice an inch, two, or whatever is necessary to remove the checked portion. Then end seal the clean end. Checks in boards are like cracks in glass - once they start they will keep growing. Best to prevent them from starting (or to remove the portion that's already split).

6 - Your stickers should be aligned exactly over one another - this is important for quality.

7 – Now – having said everything above, if it were me, in your situation because of your space constraints I would forego the stickered pile, and instead lean your board’s upright inside against the walls of your garage. You indicated that the boards are 9 and a half feet long, by the time that you slice a few inches from each end to remove the checks you'll be down to 9'. Presuming that the ceiling height in your garage is only 8 feet, I would remove a foot and a half more from the end of your boards - say bringing them down to 7.5 feet, and then set them up on 4 x 4's and lean them against the side of your garage. Every few weeks turn the boards around in order to even out the side stresses on the boards. You'll have much better air circulation around the boards, and less overall degrade during the drying process.

Vertical air drying such as this is commonly used in South America and Africa, and it works well. Turning the boards is more labor intensive than kiln drying, so it’s only common in locations where labor is extremely cheap.

If you stack/sticker your green wood immediately adjacent to the wall (as per your post), the ultimate amount of degrade due to drying problems will probably be greater than the amount of wood that you removed from the ends of the boards. Plus - you can keep the cutoff ends and make something out of them.

One other suggestion, if you’re concerned about bugs, sprinkle some boric acid around on the floor underneath the bottom of your boards.

Good luck!

[fdfrye]

Thanks for the wealth of info. I am still not sure how to get my hands on dry stickers (of any wood variety, much less a "no-stain" variety).

As for the other comments/recommendations...

It is day two of the green stack with no checks yet, if I get the sealant on it by tonight, that is one problem solved.

As for bugs, I still see none, if they start to appear, I will lay down some kind of repellant.

I like the vertical stacking option...but I just know something will go wrong. I won't stack them straight enough and I will just force a bow into every board...or even worse, one will topple for unknown reasons into my car....

I think I am going to try the stacking approach but will try moving the stack to some other location.

I have a concrete slab underneath my deck (little rows of water can drop through onto it...) and I also have a pretty good amount of unfinished area under a staircase inside my home. If I keep the wood in my house, will that affect drying times (for better or worse)?

I am definitely going to post pics of all this later tonight so you can understand what I mean...

[Bas]

I'm drying my first stack of lumber right now, so I can understand all the info can be a little overwhelming!

I bought a few cinder blocks (cement blocks, actually), put them 16" apart, put a piece of 2x4 on each of them, and stacked the lumber on that. The cement blocks are oriented vertically, to get the stack high enough off the floor. I stacked and stickered the boards like Dave described, keeping the stickers above each other as well as I could. It's real easy for the line to "wander". So take a step back now and then and see how things line up.

I used a mixture of stickers, some pine, some plywood, some hardwood. A couple more projects and I'll have enough hardwood scrap to make enough stickers. Plywood is not a good choice of course (boards are wet). But, I think it will be fine. I hope the pine won't stain, or at least not too deeply. Anything on the surface will plane off of course.

I got a bunch of cheap straps from Harbor Freight. They don't ratchet though. I can tighten them pretty well, but a ratchet would have been better. Remember to go back every 1-2 weeks and retighten, as the wood dries it will shrink and you'll develop slack in the straps.

Drying in the house will definitely make the process go faster, but it will also increase the chance of checks, splits, warps, cracks etc. You may want to dry it outside for a couple of months first, then move it inside. Scott gave me a good tip, once it's as dry as it will get, stick it in the attic. My attic can get to 140 degrees in the summer. That will cook any bugs, fungi etc. that might be in the wood.

[fdfrye]

Hey guys. I made a gallery about this whole process. Check it out and give me some more suggestions...

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?cat=8

[jeff...]

Great advise and Scott is 100% correct on vertical drying - I've used it several times and it works very well. Only problem I has was board wanting to fall over - although not so much of an issue if the ends are somewhat square.