Drying 1/2" walnut?

[SawyerBrown]

Got a call from a guy that would like me to cut his black walnut at about 1/2", eventually use as a type of paneling in his house.  Anybody have experience, or even an opinion, about how well it will dry if cut this thin?  Any special stacking/stickering required?  Thanks!

[beenthere]

Should dry pretty fast.
Are you going to do the drying for him, or just want to recommend how he should dry it? air dry or kiln dry?
Guess you need to figure out where your responsibility ends and where the customers' starts. That will help to answer your questions.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

Thin stock is prone to warping.  He should use perfect sticker alignment with 12" spacing between sticks.  Even then, some warping will happen.  For this reason, many people use 5/4, dry it and then resaw.

[WDH]

If the stack foundation is level, and if the stickers are on close centers like the Doc says, that is about as good as you can do. 

[gfadvm]

Don't know about walnut but 1/2" hackberry stickered on 16" centers with concrete block weights air dries to a nice "Ruffles" potato chip configuration!

[WDH]

Hackberry is some of the worst behaving wood that I have dried. 

(Sorry, Jake  ). 

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

Sweet gum (sap gum) is even worse.  The good news is that black walnut is pretty easy to drying at 1/2" with just a little extra effort.

[WDH]

Flatsawn sycamore is also a wood delinquent unless you are making airplane propellers  .

[red oaks lumber]

i would'nt chance dieaster, saw heavy 5/4 dry, then resaw. my experiance has been you could have  stickers 3" apart , bad i say bad

[mesquite buckeye]

I dried some 1/8" red oak like that (3-4 stickers/foot) and it did pretty good. Just realize that with closer sticker spacing you will get less air movement, so you might want to fan it in the beginning if you are in a humid area. ;D

[5quarter]

I saw a lot of 5/8" to finish at 1/2". normally I use 3/4"x 2" stickers every 16". for thin stock, I use 1/2"x1" stickers every 8". sticker only clear lumber. any knots can potentially distort the layers above. walnut tends to split at the ends so end coat your logs to minimize that. you should be fine.