Drying and Moulding

[gplitt]

I am new, and this is my first post. I have a Woodmizer LT 40 HD and cut Doug fir and WR Cedar in Washington. I have two processing questions:
I'm building a Kiln and would love heating advice. It's 24 x12 x 8' tall, insulated, and I have a woodstove and lots of firewood, but this seems inefficient. I have heard you can use several heat lamps and a couple dehumidifiers and fans. I have already spent too much money, and will be buying a moulder, so trying to avoid an expensive kiln unit. Thoughts?

Also, looking for a s4s moulder planer because I need to do a bunch or T and G 1x10 fir for siding and select deck and flooring, but can't find a good used one, Cantek M412 or or logisol/woodmizer 260 or the like. I need it by June, and supply is backordered. Any advice? 

[samandothers]

Don't have the knowledge to assist you, but wanted to welcome you to the Forum.  I am sure some smart folk will be along soon.

[doc henderson]

for the wood stove, you can bring in outside air, so the fire box gets air.  It is a fire risk of course.  but free firewood heat is hard to pass up. to put the stove outside, you need a heat exchanger of some sort, or a separate shack with duct work around the stove and firebox air in, and flu out.  If the stove is in the kiln, you will lose heat and moisture each time you open the door.  If you are drying oak, you want to keep the humidity up to slow the drying.  the halogen lights are used by many, and you can find the topic in several threads.  the wood stove may tend to get hot and then die down, unless you plan to tend it often.  might make it hard to keep things on an even keel and follow kiln schedules.  solar heats up during the day and cools at night.  and can be good for unstressed lumber.  I guess the woodstove could do the same thing.

[kantuckid]

Not knowing what you call a "bunch" of T&G but my version is a router table to T&G and my 20" planer to surface mine. It's tedious and less than perfect but it works great overall for a tightwads approach to the work. I T&G'd ~ 3,000BF of 2x6's 20 yrs back for my great room and currently doing the same from my own pine, sawed-air dried-planed-T&G by this old fart. 
My great room was done using KD, s4s, western white pine-lots easier than my current project, which is also ~ 3,000 BF. I will add that the T&G router bits for 4/4 are really common, the 8/4 version I drew up and had custom made in 1/2 router bit. 
Another thought-when I built my home in 1979/80, I trucked a large load of my own AD EWPine to a local sawmill, millwork shop and had the entire load S4S'd for my homes interior millwork. The 4/4 T&G paneling for my home I had made along with the older part of the homes 2x6 roof decking all made at another millwork shop, all air dried before they processed it. Given that I had no business plan for millwork it was far more logical to pay for that work.