Thread: Newbie Q

The rule of thumb is "an inch a year." So for every inch of thickness it will take approximately a year to come into equilibrium. The actual time will vary according to the season and the stacking. Air drying is a slow process and good stickering is critical, otherwise you are going to end up with fire wood. Mind you, yellow box is excellent fire wood.

Originally Posted by rustynail

The rule of thumb is "an inch a year." So for every inch of thickness it will take approximately a year to come into equilibrium. The actual time will vary according to the season and the stacking. Air drying is a slow process and good stickering is critical, otherwise you are going to end up with fire wood. Mind you, yellow box is excellent fire wood.

Mmm interesting, well the slabbing will be done this coming weekend weather dependent so will see how it goes, plenty of other firewood on my place so I dont want the effort of slabbing the timber up only to see it used as firewood! What are your thoughts on the butt end of a yellow box branch that has been down for 20 plus years?
I have cut it into 70mm thick slabs, the piece of wood is a branch section that has beautiful ribboning through it and the timber is super hard and dry and again virtually no rot at all, (was hard going to cut it!) I was looking into making a couple of coffee tables with the middle sections. the dimensions are approx 1m at the widest point and around 1.5 long.

With the time your trees have been down it would be worth buying a moisture meter and seeing what the reading tells you, if the moisture is too high then whatever you make from it will overtime reach equilibrium with the environment it lives in. This will result in some shrinkage, but you could also get twist and warping, which will potentially be worse than the shrinkage.

Originally Posted by Camelot

With the time your trees have been down it would be worth buying a moisture meter and seeing what the reading tells you, if the moisture is too high then whatever you make from it will overtime reach equilibrium with the environment it lives in. This will result in some shrinkage, but you could also get twist and warping, which will potentially be worse than the shrinkage.

Yeah roger that, I will look to get a moisture meter, thanks.

With Eucalyps I dont mill branches. Usually they are too unstable to dry flat because the heart is often not central.

Originally Posted by rustynail

With Eucalyps I dont mill branches. Usually they are too unstable to dry flat because the heart is often not central.

Yep I get that, the branch section that I have cut and will look to use as coffee tables has been down for a least 20 years and is dry as a chip, but a moisture meter will be the judge of that! The other section that I am looking to mill is a straight tree trunk.