More thoughts on drying timber

**Bushmiller** · 14th October 2013, 09:48 PM

In the past I have placed this subject in the milling forum, but it occurred to me that it could equally be of interest here. Not everybody that wishes to dry timber has milled it themselves. In fact that was exactly the case here as I bought the timber nearly a year ago from Forum member Mapleman, who many of you would know.

After collecting it I stuck it inside a shipping container. No significance in that other than it was the only storage I had under cover. Anyhow, about a month ago I realised that there would come a time when I wanted to use it and it would most likely still be unseasoned.

On top of this the shipping container is painted blue and as a consequence gets pretty hot. So I decided to stack the timber in a better fashion.

The next step is stickers or spacers, if you prefer. It is surprising how many you need. If you go and purchase them it is quite expensive. I saw an Ebay listing recently where a number of slabs were for sale. It was all stickered. The seller said the stickers had cost $300 and he would reimburse $250 if the stickers were returned to him after sale.

I was not prepared to fork out money for stickers and decided to source some pallets and make them up from there. It turned out I could get them from work for no charge. Absolutely free

.

Free: Free? What planet are we from that we should consider this comes for no cost? Yes there was no monetary exchange and there was no obligations placed on me, but the process from pallet to sticker is not fluid. I will share. I had to pick them up and fortunately I have a trayback ute. I could have used a box trailer otherwise.

These pallets were not really secondhand. maybe fourth or fifth hand and very unloved. Many of the nails would not come out. The nail either sheared in tension or the head flew off. Good idea to wear safety glasses during this part of the operation. The planks were not so bad, but the bearers were very bad in this regard.

More Air Drying 001.jpg More Air Drying 002.jpg

Prising the boards up tends to break them, but this is something you have to do. Once one side of boards is off, I turn the pallet over and hit the bearers off with a sledge hammer

. It works well, but try not to hit your ankles. You will only do that once or maybe twice at the most

.

There are lots of nails. I think I used twelve or thirteen pallets altogether, but not all were complete. (That sounds a bit like a euphemism for a neutered dog). You can probably see the quality of the boards or really the lack of quality. However I had one thing going for me. The pallets were the standard size (1170 x 1170) but I only needed stickers 700 wide so a had some room to manoeuver. Consequently stickers like this were not necessarily a write-off.

More Air Drying 003.jpg More Air Drying 006.jpg More Air Drying 007.jpg More Air Drying 008.jpg

This was time consuming I spent a day all told getting to this position. Then I had to thickness them. I was aiming for around 20mm thick. They ended up 19.5mm and around 30mm wide. Some were a slightly different width, but that was acceptable.

A common question is asked of me and others is can softwood be used for stickers? In fact I have been at pains to point out in the past that the recommendation by all the books is for seasoned,dressed, hardwood. Definitely yes to the first two, but on the last one, for the purposes of the hobbyist woodworker softwood may work too.

I had a long think about why we should be restricted to hardwood and the first reason is to resist compression. This is an issue in a commercial situation where a stack may be 6m high. There is a lot of pressure at the bottom and the stickers may deform. In our case we would be lucky to get 6' high. Probably not so much of an issue. The second reason is longevity. Stickers placed in the weather need to be durable and would ideally last for use in many stacks. We may be drying timber beneath the house. It may be a one-off exercise.

I still had to pass the stickers through the thicknesser. It took three passes. Then I docked them to length on the SCMS. I had approaching 300 stickers (I only needed just over 200 as I had miscalculated

. Some of the stickers:

More Air Drying 012.jpg More Air Drying 009.jpg

I had to make two stacks down one side of the container. The first was 2m long Forest Red Gum and Ironbark. The second was Forest Red Gum and Tallowwood. The bearers at the bottom were placed on pavers and each was made of two bearers from the pallet. The pallet bearers had far too many nails on the narrow edge I could not remove so it wasn't feasible to cut and dress them. The sides were OK.

More Air Drying 011.jpg More Air Drying 010.jpg

You can see the first stack finished to the rear.The second stack is taking shape below.

More Air Drying 013.jpg More Air Drying 014.jpg

You can see part of the problem. The boards were not all the same length, nor the same thickness or the same width. At this stage I used small pieces to extend the boards to the end. To create a good stack every board should be the same so that vertical and horizontal gaps are exactly the same . This permits the best possible airflow and creates the opportunity for even drying. As you can see in the next pix I had almost every size imaginable and I failed most miserably in this regard.

More Air Drying 019.jpg More Air Drying 015.jpg More Air Drying 016.jpg More Air Drying 017.jpg More Air Drying 018.jpg

The first stack was reasonable except for the slabs placed on top. The second stack was an absolute shambles

. Was it all worthwhile? Maybe

.

Regards
Paul

**pjt** · 15th October 2013, 01:25 AM

Hi Paul,
Good job on the reuse of the pallets to convert them to stickers.

I guess stacking timber just becomes a bit messy when the timber comes in odd sizes such as we might produce if we cut a log ourselves, if your anything like me I want to keep it all no matter what odd size it might be.

Pete

**Robson Valley** · 15th October 2013, 07:46 AM

Softwoods (spruce/pine/fir) are commonly used here for stickers, even for hardwoods like Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera). 18mm x 37mm x 240cm (1"x2"x 8' surveyor's stake stock) was $1.09/stick last week.
The only issue seems to be the occassional complaint about "sticker shadow," usually caused by not restacking every 3-6 months.
Mind you, these sticker species don't have an unusual amount of resin which might sweat out in extreme heat.

The birch that I'm using for carving was piled up on a mountain side for years. Dusty and some sticker marks which don't appear to penetrate more than 1-2mm. Sawmill rough, all that would come off in planing/sheet sanding anyway.
37mm x 150mm x 210cm (varies) costs me $3 each. Owner #2 would not release any of it until he was convinced that the MC was 15% or less.
You've added value to that wood in correct stacking. I'd certainly pay for that.

**Bushmiller** · 15th October 2013, 09:12 AM

Originally Posted by pjt

if your anything like me I want to keep it all no matter what odd size it might be.

Pete

Pete

That is exactly the problem. I can't throw anything away. I maintain I see value in almost everything. SWMBO calls me Steptoe, but there again I have caught her running her tongue over a waterstone

.

Regards
Paul

**Bushmiller** · 15th October 2013, 09:17 AM

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

Softwoods (spruce/pine/fir) are commonly used here for stickers, even for hardwoods like Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera). 18mm x 37mm x 240cm (1"x2"x 8' surveyor's stake stock) was $1.09/stick last week.
The only issue seems to be the occassional complaint about "sticker shadow," usually caused by not restacking every 3-6 months.
Mind you, these sticker species don't have an unusual amount of resin which might sweat out in extreme heat.

The birch that I'm using for carving was piled up on a mountain side for years. Dusty and some sticker marks which don't appear to penetrate more than 1-2mm. Sawmill rough, all that would come off in planing/sheet sanding anyway.
37mm x 150mm x 210cm (varies) costs me $3 each. Owner #2 would not release any of it until he was convinced that the MC was 15% or less.
You've added value to that wood in correct stacking. I'd certainly pay for that.

RV

The stickers we use here tend to be a little narrower than yours. Posssibly in softwood you need to increase the bearing surface a little. I'm not aware of re-stacking a drying pile, but my books do refer to not using too great a width as damp spots can occur where the drying is uneven.

In my container, I should have mentioned, a big issue is the close proximity of the stack to the wall. This promotes increased heat on one side and also a barrier to air circulation. I have half-heartedly considered placing a fan to increase air circulation.

Regards
Paul

**dai sensei** · 15th October 2013, 10:00 AM

Nice work

.

Not sure I would have bothered to thickness them, I would have just used the thicker stickers, as it increased your work substantially and they would have been uniform to start with. Although I guess different pallets could vary.

I do use softwoods often, especially on softwood slabs like Aus Cedar, as the hardwood stickers can bruise the slabs. When I have time though, I will use the cants to make stickers.

**Timless Timber** · 15th October 2013, 01:23 PM

Could you not maybe consider installing those whirlygig wind operated roof vents in the top of the sea tainer roof and some vents low down in the walls maybe - so that air is sucked in at the bottom and drawn up thru the stack...with convection as well, & vented to atmosphere, to get the air circulation that you seek without paying for power to circulate the air via a fan maybe?

My Ebac evaporative seasoning kiln had a couple fans in the unit, then 3 more in a baffle lengthways down the middle above the timber stacks...(They were expensive sealed bearings type fans due to the constant humidity, and the moisture is invariably acidic).

It would dry about 13M^3 every 3 months BUT the power bills were over $1000/month.

Anything you can do to get it dry without paying $ out makes that timber increase in value substantially. It will dry in the sea tainer - but if the air circulations minimal - what you will find happens (especially at the start when the timbers green) is that the moisture drawn out during the day when its hot, will saturate the air and condense out into liquid form overnight on the ceiling and walls, as the temp drops... then run too the floor (or worse drip off the ceiling back down thru your stack).

If you don't have a floor drain to let that water out - it has to be re evaporated the next day as the tainer warms up, and it slows the drying process for the timber cos the airs not dry relative humidity - its always humid.

If its continually moist and humid in there due to lack of exchange of air - then some weird types of mold will grow - stuff that's not good for you to breath and it can grow on your timber even - and the spores get air born when you then unstack and machine that timber... possibly getting stuff in your lungs that would be far better not being there if at all possible.

Some of the molds are that white tree rot you sometimes find inside the heartwood on old logs that have been down a while on the forest floor...again not the best for you, I've even seen weird orange types of fungi....

If you do install a floor drain to remove condensed moisture overnight - and plumb it to a bucket with graduations up the side to measure the volume of water, you can then run a type of drying schedule, bye knowing how much water your removing from the timber stacks each day & keeping a daily record when you empty it.

I used to keep a small piece of board in the stack - near the personal access door - so you can remove it periodically and moisture test it - - to see how the whole stack is progressing...and adjust things like temp and RH...to speed up or slow the process as necessary.

Just a couple suggestions.

**dai sensei** · 15th October 2013, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by Timless Timber

.... I've even seen weird orange types of fungi....

Crush it, then mix with a little water in a bucket/container. Then stand some freshly cut light coloured timber with the bottom of the log end down in the container. As the log dries it will suck the fungus up into the timber and you might score some beautiful orange spalting

**Bushmiller** · 16th October 2013, 11:24 AM

Timless Timber

Your thoughts are very sound, but in this case much of that is not possible. The partial reason is that the container belongs to my son and while he would probably quite like some ventilation in it, he may also be considering re-selling it. If the latter is the case it may limit the market if it has extra holes in the walls and roof.

This container also doubles for other purposes. There is some storage down the other side of the container and also I conduct all my sharpening of handtools on the surface plate you can probably just see at the far end on the left. For this reason, the container is opened and left open on a regular basis so to some extent there is the opportunity for moisture to evaporate (along with removal of heat

).

As you can see, it is a very opportunistic approach to drying timber, but certainly not an ideal approach.

Regards
Paul

**dadpad** · 27th October 2013, 04:17 PM

I was advised to soak hardwood stickers in water prior to stacking. any thoughts on that?

I gather this is to stop the dry stickers sucking moisture from the green timber at a faster rate than the rest of the stack drys

**Bushmiller** · 27th October 2013, 06:34 PM

Dadpad

I've not heard that before. I think that might be counterproductive as it would add more moisture to that area covered by the sticker without the ability to circulate air. As it is too wide stickers can leave a localised damp spot. However the concept means that whoever suggested that to you was thinking about the whole stack drying thing. That is good in itself.

Regards
Paul

**Bushmiller** · 27th October 2013, 07:12 PM

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Nice work

.

Not sure I would have bothered to thickness them, I would have just used the thicker stickers, as it increased your work substantially and they would have been uniform to start with. Although I guess different pallets could vary.

I do use softwoods often, especially on softwood slabs like Aus Cedar, as the hardwood stickers can bruise the slabs. When I have time though, I will use the cants to make stickers.

Neil

Sorry, I had meant to comment on this and it escaped my brain from the unused (larger) section of my brain.

The reason I thickness the stickers is that is another potential imperfection in the evenness of the stack. There is in fact huge variance in timber thickness between pallets.

The foundation might not be perfect, the bearers might not be perfect and the thickness of timber is certainly not perfect. The stickers are one of the few factors I can reasonably control. This becomes more crucial where there are many layers such as a stack with, say, 25mm boards compared to the slabs you are more accoustomed to drying.

Regards
Paul

**dadpad** · 27th October 2013, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Dadpad

I've not heard that before. I think that might be counterproductive as it would add more moisture to that area covered by the sticker without the ability to circulate air. As it is too wide stickers can leave a localised damp spot. However the concept means that whoever suggested that to you was thinking about the whole stack drying thing. That is good in itself.

Regards
Paul

It was told to me by a professional (boutique) sawmiller. As i recall it was during a conversation about drying degrade in red stringybark. I could of course easily have misinterpreted or be mis remembering. I dont think the stickers were supposed to be dripping with water.

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