I currently have a fair amount of 4/4 and 5/4 quartersawn white oak that has been cut and stickered for two weeks. Question is can I or should I try to saw this material thinner to 1/2" to kiln dry it faster. I need material to finish at 1/4" to glue up for engineered flooring.
Are you asking about re-sawing the 4/4 and 5/4 to 1/2" or are you asking just about the drying time of 1/2" white oak?
Care to explain a bit how you are making the engineered flooring?
What moisture content are you aiming for in the flooring.
Yes I am planning on re-sawing current white oak 6" wide 4/4 And 5/4 material to 1/2". finish moisture needs to be around 6-8%. I use a 40 section cold press to laminate skins to 9mm Russian birch. I would typically just resaw 5/4 dried material into three 5/16" skins. I just don't have the time to do this with my material. It is going to cost $3.65 bft for me to purchase someone else's material. So yes what would drying time be for 1/2" material?
It takes me about 8 months to air dry 4/4 white oak here in Georgia. I would think that 1/2" stock would air dry in 1/3rd to 1/2 that time, but as you know, it will not get to 6 - 8% without a kiln.
I do plan on kiln drying. However I'm not very experienced. I mostly dry soft wood and reclaimed hard wood or hardwood that has been air dried for at least six months. So can I go straight to the kiln with 1/2" if I start out with some lower temps for a week?
resaw the mat'l, airdry for as long as your schedule allows you to. then kiln dry it. you can find a drying schedule for 1/2" mat'l.
it was me doing it, i would push the drying limits beyond what most people would do. my reasoning is it gets finished at 1/4" so most drying defects ( if any) will be removed.
I make drum shell blanks for a small company. All my stock starts at about 1/2". I made a mini DH kiln for these blanks. I can take walnut to 8% in about a week. I don't do any oak ( not a popular drum wood ) but it would probably take a little longer. One thing is use lots of stickers. Mine are 1/2" thick and placed about 10" apart. I put a heavy weight on top of the stack. The biggest problem you have now is your wood is partially dried. When you resaw it you will have one wet side (the core ) and one dry side ( the skin ). Some of those boards will curl while you watch.
All in all, you will have flatter material if you resaw AFTER proper drying. If you have any SOG with oak, you will have warp even between 12" sticker spacing, on 1/2" stock.
OK, I give what's SOG?
SOG is Slope of Grain, usually from sawing across the grain or from the growth of the grain in the tree.
Any grain that deviates from "straight" will be a degree of SOG. Can be the localized grain around knots, or the curly grain around burls or bumps on a log. Comes from logs that have sweep, or logs that grow with a spiral grain pattern up the tree, or from a tree/log that has a lot of taper when not sawing parallel to the log surface. All come with different degrees of SOG that have an effect on amount of warp that can occur when wood shrinks during drying. Its a lot of things, other than straight grain. ;)
I have successfully air dried 1/2" QS white oak by keeping it in a 75 degree, 50% RH environment for about 8 weeks, stickered on 12" centers with about 50PSF of weight on it. It dried all the way down to 8%.
The only place where I had distortion was near some defects in the wood, which I believe generated the SOG issues that Gene is referring to.