Shopsmith Forums

Well said! The writer was particularly upset by the logs just being burned. Here in Colorado we never had trees any where near that big, but there were trees much bigger than we see now. I have pictures of a blue spruce in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains that is 5 feet in diameter. It is about 6 miles into the roadless area, which explains why it is still there. In the same area, as a starving first year teacher, I helped a guy re-roof an old barn that had sheeting on the roof that was anywhere from 8 to 36 inches in width. None of the boards were edged! I would love to have a few of those now!
My lovley bride is from Washington in Daviess County In, Washington, which is how we came to have the book.

ryanbp01 wrote:Today my neighbor had his Black Walnut tree taken down, I was able to get two eight foot logs and two six foot logs 24 and 18 inch diameters respectively. My son contacted a buddy of his who has a sawmill and he is going to plane saw the logs into 1 inch boards for me. It should help save some money. Nothing like being in the right place at the right time!

BPR

This weekend my son and I are going to pick up the walnut boards. When I talked to him about how much I was able to harvested, I was told there are 2 pickup loads for me to get (I have a '92 F-150). I am planning on letting them air dry in my garage for a year before working on them. I've read Nick's work in "Woodworking Wisdom" on air drying lumber. Are there any words of wisdom for air dring lumber indoors rather than outside?

BPR

ryanbp01 wrote: I've read Nick's work in "Woodworking Wisdom" on air drying lumber. Are there any words of wisdom for air dring lumber indoors rather than outside?
BPR

Wisdom? Don't know about that, but before stacking that lumber in your garage, you need to be sure there is good air circulation and you won't be hurt if the bare metal things in your garage get rusty. The wood will likely contain a lot of "free water" and will also be up to saturation point. Pretty heavy stuff. I remember a report from a guy that stacked 1,000 bd ft of green lbr. in his garage and went on vacation for two weeks. When he came back everything in his garage was rusty.

Anyway, after Nick's discussion of air drying, the best advice I can give is to throw you a reference to "The Wood Handbook" from the U.S.D.A. Forest Products Laboratory. See Chapter 12 and the parts of chapter 9 that deal with wood moisture. http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgt ... gtr113.pdf That is a link to the entire handbook - It's big at 13.9 MB You might wish to go here http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publi ... eader_id=p and download only the chapters you want.

Also - You are going to need a LOT of stickers!

Here is a link to the handbook on Nick's website.

http://www.workshopcompanion.com/KnowHo ... ndbook.htm

ryanbp01 wrote:This weekend my son and I are going to pick up the walnut boards. When I talked to him about how much I was able to harvested, I was told there are 2 pickup loads for me to get (I have a '92 F-150). I am planning on letting them air dry in my garage for a year before working on them. I've read Nick's work in "Woodworking Wisdom" on air drying lumber. Are there any words of wisdom for air drying lumber indoors rather than outside?

BPR

Well, the wood was picked up last weekend and even rough-cut, it's beautiful! I was doing some reading and found out that for best results to let the wood air dry for a year per inch of thickness. Now do I measure that time from when the boards were sawn or do I include the time the logs were first cut down?
BPR

Is there an appreciable time lag from logs to boards? I believe the rule of thumb applies to boards. Not logs.

There are so many variables here: size of logs, relative humidities air circulation, heat, etc..

The best aid is a moisture meter. You can find more info. by doing a search in this forum for moisture meters. Also take a good look at Nick's web site.