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What MC do you think is acceptable to sell slabs at?

Started by RussMaGuss, July 29, 2020, 06:09:08 PM

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RussMaGuss

I was just thinking, since most people don't cut and glue up slabs, what MC would you think is acceptable to sell at? I'm assuming most people will either just pour epoxy on them or polyurethane so as long as the finish won't crack I figure as soon as it hits that point: sell sell sell! I read on here that different climates like NZ the normal humidity is like 12%, but where I am you're supposed to hit 6-8%, so assuming I'm selling slabs that will stay in my area, would you take it down to 6-8 or would higher be ok for live edge? 

(Assuming you still nuke it at 160 to kill bugs at the end)

WDH

I dry to 10% moisture content or less for 9/4 slabs.  Some are used for tables, countertops, bar tops, and kitchen island tops.
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

firefighter ontheside

I have been selling air dried wood about 12-14%, but I make it very clear that it is air dried and not kiln dried.  Ive had no complaints about that.  I just got my kiln shed going and plan to be selling "kiln" dried lumber soon.  Ive got some of the stuff in the kiln at less than 8%.
Thats good to know about selling the thicker stuff at a little higher moisture.  
Woodmizer LT15
Kubota Grand L4200
Stihl 025, MS261 and MS362
2017 F350 Diesel 4WD
Kawasaki Mule 4010
1998 Dodge 3500 Flatbed

WDH

FFOTS,

Will you be able to sterilize in your kiln shed? 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

busenitzcww

I've been pondering the same thing. I kiln dry down to 8% but store in a non climate controlled shed and they will go back to 12% or so generally. But most shops aren't climate controlled either so I'm not sure how that effects it. I talked to a local guy here a couple weeks ago who has built tables for Apple, Walmart, and Microsoft executives and he said he'll build with wood up to 12%. 

firefighter ontheside

Quote from: WDH on July 30, 2020, 06:41:26 AM
FFOTS,

Will you be able to sterilize in your kiln shed?
Good question.  I haven't tried yet, but need to soon.  I think I'm going to try with halogen lights.  I had it up to 107 the other day with just the dehumidifier on, but that was a hot day.  I'm just wondering how my shed building components will handle the heat.  I've already got several shrinkage issues with plywood.  The plywood floor buckled along a seam and I screwed it back down.  I may need to go around and put screws in.  I only used nails and didn't use any adhesive.  That was a mistake.
Woodmizer LT15
Kubota Grand L4200
Stihl 025, MS261 and MS362
2017 F350 Diesel 4WD
Kawasaki Mule 4010
1998 Dodge 3500 Flatbed

mike_belben

What do you guys consider a sterilizing temp?

I built a small wastewood fired kiln when i was trying to sterilize bundles for state parks.  TN requires 133F core temp for 30 mins.  My setup was basically a rocket stove through the bottom of a shed and the wood on a pallet rack above.  I could hit around 160F in the insulated chamber but never reached 133 wood core, and that was with the entire pipe glowing red and the whole shed starting to smoke after a full days burn.  It was a huge fire hazard that consumed too much wood for the wages.  Was disappointing. 
Praise The Lord

WDH

I heat at 150 degrees air temp for 24 hours to be sure that the core gets to 133 degrees. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

YellowHammer

One thing that makes me feel better as a seller is that I take a slab down to 7%, to get all the movement I can out of it.  I'm trying to make it grumpy.  So I will know how well behaved the piece will be at all reasonable customer MC's, in any type home or business environment.  I also sterilize at the 150F value.  

I do both of these as a "proof test", and it eases my mind when selling, and eases the mind of the customer when buying.  If a slab is going to do anything nasty, I would have seen it long ago, during the processing stage.  If it blows apart, cracks, warps etc, it will do it for me and not the customer.  

Many customers ask "What will this do when I take it home?  Will if crack?  Will it cup?" and the easy answer I give them is "No, I've taken beyond whatever you will, and it was fine. It's a good, stable, piece of wood."
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

btulloh

Yellowhammer, what's your percentage of reject slabs due to bad behavior?  Do they get sold as rejects at a heavy discount or do they become firewood?
HM126

WDH

I rarely reject a slab.  Cut it into two smaller pieces, i.e. an 8' slab cut in half to two 4' slabs?  Yes.  Commonly.  Cutting in half reduces the defect if it is warp or twist or bow.  The badly cupped ones I slice longitudinally lengthwise, takes out a lot of the cup, then I can flatten them out on the jointer and plane flat to to make floating self board which are very popular. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

YellowHammer

Exactly.  Slabs with problems get trimmed, cleaned up, pieced, and sold for the same $/bdft as the full size slab.  In many cases, short 4 foot live edge pieces sell as good or better than full length.  Others we work them into pieces, and sell as edge 8/4.  

The actual disposed of waste amount is minor.



 



 




YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

PA_Walnut

With @WDH and @YellowHammer , dry them down and work with the results. Better to cut a slab down, or even rip it if it goes haywire than dealing with a soccer-mom gunning for you! ;D :D Around these parts, the short slabs sell just as well as the longer ones...sometimes even better.

I can't think of a single reason that a slab should not be dried to the same spec as dimensional stock. I hear stories time and time again of big slabs grenading, even when epoxying it, from air-dried material, and improperly kiln dried slabs. We won't even talk about slabs that are not sterilized.  :o
I own my own small piece of the world on an 8 acre plot on the side of a mountain with walnut, hickory, ash and spruce.
LT40HD Wide 35HP Diesel
Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber
Kubota M62 Tractor/Backhoe
WoodMizer KD250 Kiln
Northland 800 Kiln

alan gage

I'm a very small time player, if I could even be considered a player. I'm not relying on selling lumber for my income but I like selling to offset my costs (and reduce what I have on hand). I don't have a kiln and at this point don't plan on adding one. I've sold slabs fresh off the mill as well as ones that are air dried down to 11-12%. Strangely enough people around here seem to prefer saving money and buy the ones fresh from the mill. I've never had anyone ask if I have kiln dried material and have only had a couple people even ask how long it's dried or what the moisture content is. I'm always upfront about this and tell people what the moisture content is and how long it will probably take to finish drying and that I'd be happy to check the moisture content anytime they want to swing by with the piece.  All I can figure is that this is a relatively new phenomenon around here and that no one has had a bad experience yet.

I'm seriously considering only selling green slabs from here on out on an on-demand basis. I do not enjoy moving those big slabs and I don't enjoy hanging onto them for a year or two while they dry. And dealing with the degrade. And then it's not just what someone wants. Two years is a long time to speculate without a kiln. I don't even know if people will still be buying slabs in two years.

Thinking of just advertising that if you want slabs tell me what you want and I'll cut it out of a log and you come get it right away. They get a hefty discount because the risk and wait time is theirs and I don't have to stack and sticker heavy slabs. If no one wants to do that I can just saw those logs into lumber I'm more likely to use myself.

Alan
Timberking B-16, a few chainsaws from small to large, and a Bobcat 873 Skidloader.

customsawyer

I do the same as WDH and Yellowhammer. You have to figure out how to market most anything that comes off the mill. One of the things I get is customers coming in looking for "scrapes". I just ask them if they ever went to a hog farm and asked for a scrap pig? I then let them know that I even sell my sawdust. There is no scraps in my inventory.
Two LT70s, Nyle L200 kiln, 4 head Pinheiro planer, 30" double surface Cantek planer, Lucas dedicated slabber, Slabmizer, and enough rolling stock and chainsaws to keep it all running.
www.thecustomsawyer.com

Stephen1

I am new at this also. Custom drying.
Customers do not always understand the importants of KD. I like to compare raisins and grapes. The raisin is the KD of the grape. KD slabs should look like a raisin. 
I aim for 6-8%. I believe all the movement should happen before I send the slabs home with the customer. 
I am dryng 6 large pieces of EWP right now. I can dry 3 pieces at a time.  13' long, 48" across. 14" deep. thats the thickest my WM will saw. We also sawed a fireplace mantle and 4 table top 3" slabs out of the middles.
 The customer is going to mount them on the wall in his mancave and mount his Hunting trophies on them.  I keep them in the kiln for 7 days. The kiln runs at 150-160 for 6 days. I am hoping the core will hit 150. I have no way of measuring the core temperature. 
IDRY Vacum Kiln, LT40HDWide, BMS250 sharpener/setter 742b Bobcat, TCM forklift, Sthil 026,038, 461. 1952 TEA Fergusan Tractor

scsmith42

I too follow the process of Danny, Robert, and Jake, and dry below 10%.  I'll sterilize for 24 hours at 160F, bringing them up from a temperature of 120F. 

I also run a conditioning cycle after the sterilization cycle. During this time I run a high pressure (1000 psi) fogging system while the lumber is cooling down from 160.  Usually it bottoms out at 90F and 40% RH and I'll run the cycle for at least 24 hours (and sometimes 48 hours with thicker material) in order to ensure that the core and shell are at a consistent MC%.

Quite frankly, before I installed the fogging system I ran into some problems with thick slab movement (3"+) after planing if it was planed immediately after drying.  The movement was due to delta's between the core and shell MC%'s.  This problem went away after I started placing a lot of focus on conditioning.
Peterson 10" WPF with 65' of track
Smith - Gallagher dedicated slabber
Tom's 3638D Baker band mill
and a mix of log handling heavy equipment.

Stephen1

Quote from: scsmith42 on August 02, 2020, 04:36:05 PM
I too follow the process of Danny, Robert, and Jake, and dry below 10%.  I'll sterilize for 24 hours at 160F, bringing them up from a temperature of 120F.

I also run a conditioning cycle after the sterilization cycle. During this time I run a high pressure (1000 psi) fogging system while the lumber is cooling down from 160.  Usually it bottoms out at 90F and 40% RH and I'll run the cycle for at least 24 hours (and sometimes 48 hours with thicker material) in order to ensure that the core and shell are at a consistent MC%.

Quite frankly, before I installed the fogging system I ran into some problems with thick slab movement (3"+) after planing if it was planed immediately after drying.  The movement was due to delta's between the core and shell MC%'s.  This problem went away after I started placing a lot of focus on conditioning.
I can see that helping. Is the heat gradually reduced or the heat is shut off while fogging is happening.
IDRY Vacum Kiln, LT40HDWide, BMS250 sharpener/setter 742b Bobcat, TCM forklift, Sthil 026,038, 461. 1952 TEA Fergusan Tractor

scsmith42

Quote from: Stephen1 on August 02, 2020, 05:36:46 PM
Quote from: scsmith42 on August 02, 2020, 04:36:05 PM
I too follow the process of Danny, Robert, and Jake, and dry below 10%.  I'll sterilize for 24 hours at 160F, bringing them up from a temperature of 120F.

I also run a conditioning cycle after the sterilization cycle. During this time I run a high pressure (1000 psi) fogging system while the lumber is cooling down from 160.  Usually it bottoms out at 90F and 40% RH and I'll run the cycle for at least 24 hours (and sometimes 48 hours with thicker material) in order to ensure that the core and shell are at a consistent MC%.

Quite frankly, before I installed the fogging system I ran into some problems with thick slab movement (3"+) after planing if it was planed immediately after drying.  The movement was due to delta's between the core and shell MC%'s.  This problem went away after I started placing a lot of focus on conditioning.
I can see that helping. Is the heat gradually reduced or the heat is shut off while fogging is happening.
Heat is reduced from 160 to 90F while fogging.  It usually takes 12+ hours to drop, even with the fogging system cooling the air.  Several thousand bd ft of lumber is a bit of a heat sink.
Peterson 10" WPF with 65' of track
Smith - Gallagher dedicated slabber
Tom's 3638D Baker band mill
and a mix of log handling heavy equipment.

123maxbars

I do the same as mentioned above.  One thing though that always makes me shake my head is the customer will state they need a really dry slab, then I go on their Instagram account and watch them build a table with said slab in their garage workshop, with the door wide open, in the humid TN Summer. My dry slabs lying on the bench going up in MC, kills me seeing that, but the way it goes,  What it comes down to is most woodworkers/weekend hobby guys have a small garage shop with no climate control, so getting the wood down to the correct MC and selling it at that MC is the right thing to do, but the slab will probably never be that low ever again, most of the time at least, there are some exceptions. 
Sawyer/Woodworker/Timber Harvester
Woodmizer LT70 Super Wide, Nyle L53 and 200 kiln, too many other machines to list.
outofthewoods
Youtube page
Out of the

K-Guy

Quote from: customsawyer on August 02, 2020, 01:05:16 PMThere is no scraps in my inventory.


That's cause it's all in you, ya ornery cuss!!! :o  ;D
Nyle Service Dept.
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
- D. Adams

PA_Walnut

Quote from: customsawyer on August 02, 2020, 01:05:16 PMI just ask them if they ever went to a hog farm and asked for a scrap pig? I then let them know that I even sell my sawdust. There is no scraps in my inventory.


@customsawyer That's funny. @YellowHammer has a bargain pallet. Puts it in an out-of-the-way place and let's the pickers have at it. Brilliant idea, but I'm going one step further and making it self-service, with an illustration of how to measure board feet, place your money in the cash box, no change is available so take some more. 
I'm putting a symbolically religious statue or two next to it in attempt to keep folks honest. :D8)
I own my own small piece of the world on an 8 acre plot on the side of a mountain with walnut, hickory, ash and spruce.
LT40HD Wide 35HP Diesel
Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber
Kubota M62 Tractor/Backhoe
WoodMizer KD250 Kiln
Northland 800 Kiln

YellowHammer

You'd be better off putting a calculator next to it.

Trying to get customers to understand or measure board feet is like trying to explain nuclear particle physics to them.  I have it spelled out on my webpage, I explain it to them in person, and they still say "I just don't get the whole board foot thing." smiley_smash

Then I realize that many of them can't do basic multiplication, or the ones that can, get "brain lock."  I had a guy yesterday ask me how many board feet were in a 3'x7' table top and I said well, "Multiply 3 x 7, how much is that?" and the answer from the customer was "I don't do math." :D :D



YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

boonesyard

Quote from: YellowHammer on August 09, 2020, 08:05:06 AM
You'd be better off putting a calculator next to it.

Trying to get customers to understand or measure board feet is like trying to explain nuclear particle physics to them.  I have it spelled out on my webpage, I explain it to them in person, and they still say "I just don't get the whole board foot thing." smiley_smash

Then I realize that many of them can't do basic multiplication, or the ones that can, get "brain lock."  I had a guy yesterday ask me how many board feet were in a 3'x7' table top and I said well, "Multiply 3 x 7, how much is that?" and the answer from the customer was "I don't do math." :D :D
Wow,,,,, and they vote
LT50 wide
Riehl Steel Edger
iDRY Standard kiln
BMS 250/BMT 250
JD 4520 w/FEL
Cat TH255 Telehandler
lots of support equipment and not enough time

"I ain't here for a long time, I'm here for a good time"

thecfarm

And they don't know the alphabet either.  :o
I am far from a smart person, but I can add and multiply and know my ABC's. I work in a hardware store and need to do basic math at time. As I tell customers, I maybe off by $5 either way, but the price is just about that much. Than we need to look up something that starts with a H. They start out at the B's and go from there.  :o
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

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