Thread: Smoked wood

G'day Lorenzo

Never heard of smoke curing, and I come from several generations of builders and cabinet makers and I worked in the international timber trade for several years.

However, some of the early wood waste fired drying kilns did emit a lot of smoke into the drying chamber. None of our people liked them because of the difficulty in precisely controlling temperature, humidity and airflow - they were all replaced by electric or oil-fired kilns. Although the timber that had been dried in these old kilns did smell smokey, it was always my understanding that it was the heat and airflow that did the drying, not smoke curing.

But I may be wrong?

Fair Winds

Graeme

Graeme: I think your summary is correct. I'm a retired dendrology/wood science professor with a career interest in wood anatomy. Very, very few woods have sufficient non-cellulosic material for smoke to bind with. Heat and air flow, as irregular as it might have been, would do the job. Air-drying is tedious at best. It does occur to me, however, that the smoke might prevent subsequent fungus or insect attack.