Lumber Air Drying Fixture

What a great concept. I think I’ll go home and break out the welder….thanks!

-- Carl Rast, Pelion, SC

That is a great idea and a great design. i have passed up several trees i wanted to make into lumber, specifically because I have nowhere to dry it. Make one of these, and put it in my shed! I bet the materials would be reasonable, and a welding shop could fabricate most of it for me.

-- Women love me.....trees fear me

Ten weeks seems like a short time. What kind of weather do you have for a ten week drying time. That’s a nice simple design with only a little attention to tighten the nuts. Do you sell the lumber or use it for your business? Where do you get the trees? Do you cut the lumber your self? If not how much are you charged to cut the tree? I think you have solved the “Lumber cost Too much”. Nice design and thanks for sharing your creativity.
It always easy when someone shows you how to do it!

-- Dominic, Trinity, Florida...Lets be safe out there.

Dominic – I’m not in business – just the family’s furniture maker. However, I’m a pretty avid hobbyist. I have used an alaska chainsaw mill when I had more energy and didn’t worry about yield. Here in the inerterior of British Columbia birch is abundant and there are numerous mini-mills for sourcing lumber. It is also cut to my specs to suit my projects. I pay about $1 bf for the lumber – the mill sources the log. Some day I’ll post the spalted birch kitchen I did a couple of years ago with local birch.

-- Phil in British Columbia

When I first looked at your picture, I thought to myself, “Doesn’t this guy know he needs to weight the lumber?” But I decided to read further and, WOW! what a terrific idea. I’m making a copy of this to show to my husband and the sawyer who brings his portable bandsaw mill to our property. We’ll have to check out what our local salvage yard gets for the metal, but it could probably work with an adequate I-beam as well. The only potential problem I could foresee is not getting all the cross-members perfectly level. How much weight (how many board feet) are you able to stack on this? What is the width— about 4’? What size stickers do you use?

One of our biggest problems is rodents when drying outside. We’ve tried 7/16” stickers (which most say is not adequate for air flow), but even that did not alleviate the rodent problem. We have tried an inside location but air flow was not sufficient. How do you solve that problem? Or aren’t you bothered with mice, etc. in Canada?

Sorry, for all the questions, but this is an exciting concept! We can learn SO much from our more-experienced LumberJocks! Thanks for the post!

-- "But godliness with contentment is great gain." 1 Timothy 6:6

I wish I knew this a couple years ago when I bought a bunch of maple, oak, and walnut, and dried it myself, I stickerd it ok and covered it but never thought to weight it down. So I ended up with a lot of twisted, cupped and warped lumber. I got a lot of good stuff too. I was lucky, but had way too much waste. Thanks for the info.

-- Mike. Profisher50@yahoo.com

It looks like a great way to dry lumber.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

This is a very cool idea. I like how it’s at waist level for easy loading/unloading. Does the steel stain the wood? I assume your threaded rod is galvanized?

I plan to take the mill to the log once i start milling (coupe felling or windthrown NZ beech) and because I’m practicing low impact forestry, my plan was to set up an air drying platform next to the mill site in the forest. The thought was to let it air dry sufficiently on location so that extraction will be easier because of the lighter weight.

I can see using this design and building a portable version that I can hand carry into the forest and then remove when I remove the wood. Maybe out of aluminium or even wood.

Thanks for sharing the idea!

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi Stanley;

This is a great idea! I’ve been shying away from resawing logs into lumber simply due to the drying time and
an easy way to keep it weighted down.

You say you can bring moisture content down to under 10% in as little as ten weeks?

I have enough patience for that. (I think)

Thank you for this post!

Lww

-- by Lee A. Jesberger http://www.prowoodworkingtips.com http://www.ezee-feed.com

Thanks for all the comments. Drying time will be affected by local conditions and board thickness so an 8/4 stack will take longer than 4/4 stack. An I-beam will work just as well – I just happened to have the tubing.
I did forget to mention that I put stickers between the first row and the supports. Also the stickers should be directly above the supports in your stack because that is where the clamping pressure is. I’m not sure there is a science about the thickness of the sticker – the key is air movement either by fan or by wind. We live between a lake and a mountain so have a breeze nearly every day and I have a fan with reversed motor in the green house pulling air through the stack. If you do this, you will find it is like making your own wine – just stay ahead of the demand.

-- Phil in British Columbia

Cool Thanks for sharing

-- Kip Northern Illinois ( If you don't know where your goin any road will take you there) George Harrison