sort of a kiln

[snowman]

 Im very new too this milling stuff so forgive my ignorance please. Land i recently bought has an old hippie cabin on it with all south facing floor to ceiling windows. Can i stack green lumber in there, maybe leave door and windows open. Will it dry too fast, no faster than air drying or what? If it matters, ill mostly be drying 6x6 and 8x8 stuff, fir and larch. Fans arnt an option , no elec yet. One more dumb question, green wood for stickers, that just leave a mark on wood or what. Thanks

[Radar67]

Welcome to the forum Snowman.

I can't answer the question on the kiln portion of your post, but someone here will join in to answer it.

You can use green stickers. They may leave "sticker stain", but this can be planed out before you use the lumber. Make sure you cut a little bigger than what you want the finished size to be.

Stew

[Tom]

Snowman

You won't have a kiln but you might have a good drying shed. 

The most important thing about air-drying is air movement.  You need a good air flow to get rid of the wet air.  Lack of a good air-flow is a recipe for mildew, mold and bacterial stain.

Direct sun, cooking a board or timber, will exacerbate cracking/splitting

If this cabin isn't well built, you should have a concern for the amount of weight the floor will hold.  Wood is heavy and a drying stack can weigh tons.

While the windows may seem like a plus, they may allow the sun to cook the wood.  You might end up putting up Venetian blinds or some other baffle.

If the access is only a door, you might consider fans to move the air.

If the floor is built right on the ground, you might consider a foundation under the stack to raise it up.

I've found that some of the best drying shed are open pole barns

I don't know where you are, but Larch pretty  much takes you out of the geographical area with which I'm familiar  Some of these things I've mentioned are good rules of thumb regardless of where you are. 

[Den Socling]

Welcome snowman,

It might be dangerous to try to dry red or white oak lumber in that cabin (they might crack too badly to make lumber) but you might be able to drop some moisture out of your softwood timbers.

Instead of letting direct sun hit one side, I'd stand something like black plastic in front of the stack. That would create air movement. Unfortunately, it's in the wrong direction. However, if you could get the warm air to rise in the front of the stack, that might make it draw air in through the back and that might be the air that had gone up in the front. If you could create that flow, then you could 'vent' some humidity and drop the moisture content. No fans and nothing but the sun for heat.

Yo!  Tom posted while I was typing (and answering phone calls).

[DanG]

Den, I like that idea of "engineering" a convection current to create airflow over the stack.  I'll have to do some cogitatin' about it. ;D 8) 8) 8)

[chet]

A word of caution as to using green stickers, as mentioned above.  Sticker stain can't always be planed out. Use dry stickers especially on valuable hardwoods. 

[getoverit]

I wasn't gonna mention it, but since y'all started it....

Yesterday afternoon I found a stack of rough sawn pine 2X6's that really wasn't doing me much good. and they are really dry from being stacked in my hay barn for years and years. some were actually turning into fat lighter.

I cut them into 4' sections, then ran them through a table saw set at 3/4" and made about 150 of them.. they turned out to be 3/4" X 1 1/2" X 48" long. While I was at it, I got my "fix" for smelling some good sawdust  :D and made a pile of it under the tablesaw about a foot high.

I know I will need more, but have set this load aside for that special load of Hickory flooring I'm planning on cutting up soon.