Teakwood Solar Kiln

[doc henderson]

I am glad to hear that.  I was afraid you might tell me you already knew all that.  the accurite I pictured is now 30 bucks on amazon, and has worked well for me.  you could daily look at the max and low temps and humidity and record these.  you will see a pattern and it may help to know when to vent or when to run the DH.  what is the MC of the wood.  If it is lower than what it would attain outside, then you may want to cover it and or dead stack to keep it dry.  If you goal was to just speed up the process to get to EMC (the MC it would get to at the RH outside) then you can do what ever.  Do you have a target MC?

[teakwood]

I am glad to hear that.  I was afraid you might tell me you already knew all that.

I was a smart ass when i was young and still kinda am, but i have learned to listen :D

i will explain my situation a little. the natural EMC in my wood over the year is 12-16% (rain and dryseason) the goal was to speed up drying as i sell the lumber faster then it air drys. so target % for deck boards is 16%, the 1" now measures 15% on the probes and the boards on top which i could reach with the pin meters are 9-11%. the idea is to let the wood rest at a normal outside environment in my storage for at least a month, so the boards can gain or release moisture as they want and calm down.

for panel/furniture lumber i want a MC of 12-14%

[doc henderson]

Not my goal to tell anyone stuff they already know.  we are finding this interesting in a different environment than out own.  I took a biology of organisms class in college and the professor Dr. Craig E. Martin was a conceptual teacher.  This made it hard for the 400 pre-med folks in the class that would spend hours studying and memorizing facts.  the mean on the first test was 43%.  Each test would have two questions about half a page long.  he would ask a question about plant physiology but make up a planet with different gasses and a different terminal electron receptor in the mitochondria/chloroplast.  you had to understand it not memorize it.  you had to listen in class and ask a question if you did not understand the concept.  I then did research with him for a few years.  you either loved him or hated him.

great work and success Teak.

[teakwood]

Yesterday, after 7days of drying, i took the 1" boards out of the kiln and loaded a new pack.

the dried boards went from 22% to 10-13% which is beneath my target MC, so i couldn't ask for a better performance. 

[customsawyer]

I remember at the first project that Gene the woodDoc came to, I had just finished building my kiln. I hadn't even run a load through it. With Gene's level of knowledge and experience and the fact that I had no clue what I was doing, I fully expected to get told what I had done wrong. Gene in his kind way went on to explain the main thing that he saw wrong with my kiln. That was that I had not planned on where I was going to put the next two kilns. He was absolutely correct and I see that you may have made the same mistake. Once you get one and you see how they add to your operation, it doesn't take long for you to start looking on where to put the next ones. Of course with the knowledge you learned on the first one they will be the new and improved 2.0 versions.
Great work on your kiln build. Keep in mind that by adding another pack of 1x lumber you might raise the moisture in the 2x that is in there already for a little while. This may or may  not be a problem with Teak.  

[YellowHammer]

Kilns are like Pringles, you cant have just one.  I've got 3, and that's enough for me....maybe...

[teakwood]

 :D :D :D that gave me a good laugh!

I think i'm ok. with 1.5 month of air drying and 7days in the kiln i can dry wood alot faster than i sell it. in this dry season (5month more form now) i will dry so much wood that it will last me for the whole year.

and i do have more space for more kilns, but i really do not want to build another one  :D. we will see

thanks for all, Ramon

[customsawyer]

Spoken like a individual with their first kiln. Once word gets out that you are drying the wood then the sales go up and you need another.

[Crossroads]

My wife said that your kiln looks like a piece of furniture. 

[teakwood]

 :D I'm glad to sell her one at furniture price! She can store her rope and shoes in there. Just place it in the shade and it will stay cool and dry  ;D

[Crossroads]

I'm pretty sure the shipping would be a deal breaker lol

[teakwood]

The shipping would be cheap compared to my price!  :D :D

[Crossroads]

The world may never know lol good job on the kiln! 

[teakwood]

Put a second load of 1" boards (already at 16% air dried) in Thursday and had to take it out yesterday, Monday, because it was at 10%!! . put the third load in at 15% airdried and will take that out probably in 4 days. that means that in the first two weeks of operation the kiln dried 420 1x5" deckboards, which is absolutely amazing. and that is half of the kiln space, the other half is still occupied with the 3" thick stack, currently at 22%.  
I paid 1.3$ per board for external drying and transport to the kiln (100 miles trip), so the kiln already made me 546$ in two weeks, a NO BRAINER!  I'm eager to see how the electricity bill comes in, i have a almost exclusive service for the kiln so any increase in this bill is related to the kiln. I don't expect it to be more than 100$.

did some experimenting with drying fruits in the kiln, they turned out delicious 
 
most of the time we have an excess  of bananas ,now i know what to do with them.
second load, starfruit

[caveman]

Ramon, I'm glad the kiln is working so well for you.  When you start drying mangos, I may have to come down and check out your operation.  With your work ethic and attention to detail, you have made huge strides with your business.

[Sod saw]

.


Gee!  

Do you ever wonder if you made a kiln out of Stainless Steel and only dried fruit to organic health food stores, could you make more money selling the fruit than you earn selling teak?

or do both?        8)


.

[teakwood]

I don't have a market study or looked into a business plan for dried fruit, but here are my thoughts;

I don't have enough fruit for a business so would have to buy. the green houses are pretty big to produce fruit in a larger scale (watched a video from Thailand where they dry bananas) , would hate to deal with government licensees and health ministry codes and other BS. I think the market is already covered.

To be successful with a business you need one of two things; Produce a large amount or have a niche market.

I have found my niche market and built a successful business around it. I'm happy with it and will stay with what i have. Have expanded/invested to a point where the whole operation is at a sweet spot, i think it can't get any better from this point. I guess i'm at 90-95% of a perfect business balance, and that is pretty hard to achieve.

any growth from here and it opens a whole different can of worms. No thanks, i'm good.   

[teakwood]

It's unusual to have only 1 sticker per 4 feet.  Most times that will induce a sag between stickers when heated in a kiln.  I've never dried teak so don't know how it behaves.  

Well, after 4 loads thru the kiln i can confirm that my stickering system works perfectly.
No bow, cup, twist, crack or split more than normal air drying, i'm a happy happy camper.
Man, that kiln is probably the best thing i did in my life so far, working since 3 weeks and already paid for half of it's cost, i'm not kidding. Thank to you guys for encourage me to build one.



Next load for the sawmill. For you guys not familiar with teak, thats one heck of a quality load of logs. all the thinnings are starting to pay off, look at the sapwood-heartwood proportion and the color of the wood. and it gets better every year

the kiln is getting hotter every day, we are getting more and more into dryseason 45C/115F, any more and i think i will start to vent the kiln at daytime. Don't want to melt anything in there and really don't need to speed up the process any more. the DH's are getting very hot


and look what finally made it to CR, thanks to Eric, also known as the guy who invented the 8th workday a week  :D

[tule peak timber]

Your board stacks look great. How old are the logs on the trailer? Lots of heartwood....

[teakwood]

you mean the log deck? those trees are 17years old and are a nice medium size. remember, i only thin and let the best trees standing. diam is 10-16" on the first log.

If you sell roundwood, logs, the first thing a buyer does is have you cut a tree to see how the color is, if it's nice dark as my trees then you get payed a better price. they grow a little slower than in the Caribbean side because we have a 4 month dry season but we get alot more money out of our wood because of the color and the nice heart wood. 

[teakwood]

Happy birthday @YellowHammer ,enjoy your day.

emptied the kiln yesterday, 4 loads of 1" boards within 18days and the stack on the right was 3" which went from 42% to 19% inside the core, outside was 8%, thats way enough for my uses. will let them sit for 10 days so they find their EMC, and then i have to made 46x 3" stair steps out of them.


I put in another load of 1" boards, two fresh packs, pretty much green of the sawmill, wanted to try how it goes with wet wood. it's funny how this affects the kiln, the kiln is struggling to get as hot as the other days and stays several degress below the max temp. And of course the DH's are putting alot more water out, they do 20lt each/ day.

[YellowHammer]

It's good to see it working and thanks for the Happy Birthday wishes.  The more moisture in the kiln the more energy it takes to convert the large amounts of liquid to vapor, or the enthalpy required goes up.  So that's one real good way to control temps or "ballast" your kiln, and it's also how I almost burned my solar kiln down.  

We had a power outage and I forgot to open the doors on the empty kiln, came back the next day and the plastic roof and fan blades had gotten so hot they had melted.  Oops.  I don't recommend that.

[doc henderson]

HBD YH!

[teakwood]

After 6 weeks the kiln payed for itself, at least the money i invested. didn't calculate the lumber and my hours. Pretty sure that would add up to at least 15k, but well, the kiln is a money machine.  

it's getting sunnier and hotter by the day, now i need to went the kiln form 1-3 pm so the DH wont burn up. I'm getting 48C /119F which i don't want to exceed. Teak is a very easy wood to dry, just throw it in there and several days later it's dry


3/4" boards 5 days from wet to 12%
1"    boards 10 days
3"           20-25 days

[nativewolf]

Been a few weeks since I checked on this and I see you've made incredible progress.  Congrats on the kiln!  Glad to see it paying off and I think that even during the rainy season you'll find it speeds drying.  

Glad to see the quarry news as well.  

All kidding aside expand your mill/drying footprint.  I could definitely see a few more solar kilns in your future as well as the need for more drying.  Also, since I am spending your money and time, start shopping for the hydraulic sawmill with an ability to do long beams (niche-but one with promise).