I have some 4/4 beach air drying. It`s at 16%, how dry does it need to be before I can dead stack it in my shed?
Thanks for your help arj
I would think anything under 20 % mc would be safe to dead pile.Especially inside.
What is the temp and humidity in your shed?
Seems this moisture content would be a bit soon to solid pile (dead stack) your wood. Apparently you can't sticker it in the shed?
Beech, even American Beech can be hard to dry. I think you are safe to deadstack if you are truely at 16%. Just remember that you could be carrying bugs in with the stack.
Back to the 16%, are you getting that with a meter of by baking samples? If you are baking samples, is that a cross section or core?
As I said, beech can be hard to dry. If you have a lot of cracks, casehardening is indicated and cores could be much higher. If the core is much higher and you moved the wood to a location with a much lower EMC, you could get a lot of honeycomb.
The 16% is from my meter. My shed is like an old fashion lumber yard shed long and narrow. Can`t get along side boards to sticker, lack of space is why I went this way.I`m trying to protect the wood the best way I can until there`s enough room in my heated garage to skack it and finish drying it. The shed is three sided open end so humidity would be the same as outside. So far the boards are flat. My only other choice would be leave it stickered on a skid, and cover it with canvas. It does take up more room that way, but if that would be beter I could around the pile.
arj
DEAD stacking is nothing but trouble IMO
I would rather stack outside under tin or tarps even ...flat stacking gives ALL the nastys a chance at ya.....
Stickers work ;)
Just my experience dead stacking store bought wood for a period of time is it is easy to get mildew on and into the wood.
This is a good question. Does it matter what type of wood it is before you transfer it from sticker to deadstacking? What is an adverage % of hardwood before doing this? I've done this with pine cut 4/4 and 8/4 after 5 months without any problems, but I wonder about the hardwood? ???
Thanks
Click for the handbook
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr113/ch12.pdf
Go to page 12-14 for a little info on solid stacking :)