How to Dry Wood – Fast & Easy!

hello everybody joe classen here with wild revelation outdoors over the past many months i've done quite a few videos about live edge woodworking and chainsaw lumber milling and a common question that many folks have in regard to those topics is how to properly season or dry wood that you've cut before you can start working with it now there are two main ways to do this you can either dry your wood with a kiln which most people don't have access to or you can air dry it in this video i'll be sharing a relatively fast easy process that works great for air drying out your lumber for upcoming projects as well as a few tips for accelerating the process so let's get started after getting your lumber cut out in the woods and brought back home the first thing i do is trim or break away any soft rotting or bug damaged bark on the outside of the wood with a large chisel or the back side of a hammer and the next step is to get the wood cleaned up as best as you can i use a stiff bristled brush to sweep away all the loose bark dirt and sawdust and then i go over each board on both sides with a shop vac to finish things off now if there's evidence of insect activity in a particular piece of wood as a precautionary measure i'll spray the board down with plain old white vinegar which acts as a natural insecticide and which also won't discolor or damage your wood so after all the wood is cleaned up i'll give the ends of each board or slab a good coat of wood grain and sealer such as anchor seal now you can use plain latex paint for this purpose as well which i used to do quite a bit in the past but i found that a product such as anchor seal works much better as far as preventing the wood from cracking checkering or splitting as it begins to dry out now something else i do is put some end sealer on any areas of wood that might have a slight crack already or what looks like the beginning of a crack so after applying the end sealer and letting it dry i stack the wood up in a dry well-ventilated place which for me is the corner of the garage on my wood rack or outside under a covered porch for the bigger pieces now it's very very important to promote and maintain good airflow between each piece of wood as well as the area that you're drying it in and to do that you'll need to put stickers as they're called are small planks of wood in between each slab or each plank of lumber i typically use sticks that are around one to two inches thick and place anywhere from two to four stickers in a uniform fashion in between each piece of wood depending on how long it is it's also important to make sure you use the same size stickers for each piece of wood to help prevent warping while it dries and as a final measure of precaution to help keep the wood from warping while it ages i place heavy objects such as these old weights on top of each wood stack again in a balanced uniform fashion so after all that it's a matter of letting nature take its course and dry out the wood as a rule of thumb it typically takes a year of drying time per each inch of wood thickness now it may seem like it will be forever until you can finally start working with the wood you've cut and processed and no doubt it can be very hard to be patient during the drying process there are however ways to greatly accelerate this process and one way that's worked great for me is simply to run a box fan on your stack of wood while it's drying i keep a fan going on medium speed year-round in my wood drying area and i position it so that it creates a constant flow of air all around the entire drying area which again greatly reduces the overall time it takes for the wood to dry out and season properly using this particular process i'm usually able to dry out a one to one and a half inch thick piece of wood in a matter of months instead of waiting years now a big question that folks have in regard to this process is how do you know exactly when your wood is dried out and ready to be put to use one of the most accurate ways to do this which i highly recommend is using a moisture meter keep checking the moisture level of your wood until it stabilizes and holds steady at the lowest number or level that you can get it for several weeks or months in a row now there's really no magic number to look for as it will depend upon where you live how thick the wood is what kind of wood it is and so on again the key is for that number or that level to stabilize so once you get that level down as low as you can get it for an extended period of time that's probably as low as it's going to go thus your wood is ready to be used now again keep in mind this is going to take several months to even several years depending on how thick the wood is and the environment in which you're drying it so you're gonna have to be patient one way or the other so i hope this video helps and if you'd like to see lots more like it be sure to subscribe to this channel and finally if you'd like to shop online 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Channel: Wild Revelation Outdoors

Views: 190,530

Rating: 4.8450413 out of 5

Keywords: how to dry wood fast, how to dry wood, drying wood for furniture, how to dry wood without cracking, how to dry wood slabs, how to dry wood cookies, how to dry wood for woodworking, how to tell when wood is dry enough for woodworking, wood drying rack, drying wood at home, drying wood after milling, video, Wild Revelation Outdoors, Joseph Classen, woodworking projects, air drying wood

Id: s58JuIoXS7s

Length: 5min 54sec (354 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 09 2020