difficulties in drying hickory

[caveman]

We pulled a mixed load out of our solar kiln yesterday (cypress mantles and slabs, live edged water oak, live edged pecan, live edged hickory and live edged sweetgum).  Most dried acceptably flat but some of the oak slabs cupped quite a bit but that is how it goes with low quality red oak.  All of these were air dried down to around 20% before putting in the kiln two weekends ago.  I shut the fans off Wednesday to prevent excessively drying the load.

I agree that sawing and drying hickory is challenging but for a board foot price we probably make more on hickory (pignut hickory and pecan) than anything else although we do not saw a lot of it.  We also have not sawn boards out of hickory, just slabs, usually 2.5" thick.
pecan

 

 

[WDH]

Very well done!  What is your target final moisture content?

[caveman]

The retail outlet that sells our wood wants slabs below 15%.  With such a wide variety of the last load, I turned off the fans when the MC got down to 8-11% in the thick pieces.  We left them in the kiln until yesterday.  This kiln seems to dry wood flatter now that we don't seal it up tightly and do not run the dehumidifier at night.  It has enough leaks that we do not use vents.  When we are drying pine or cypress right off of the mill we leave the doors slightly cracked open.