I have seen some 1 year old air dried oak, 3" thick, for sale. Presumably it is not ready to use; but is it's current condition any indication of how it will turn out; or is it too early to say? In Western NY how long would you think it would have to dry? Is simply storing it indoors enough after a year, or does it still have to be stickered and separated (or whatever you do when air drying wood; obviously I don't know anything about it). Thanks.
And a follow-up question. If the wood is now 3", can it be re-sawed to say,
1" now to dry faster or is it better to let it dry as is?Where I used to live we used a rule of thumb for air drying timber, properly stacked with spacers and reasonable air flow, of one year per inch thickness.
Oak is famous for twisting and othwise misbehaving when drying. If you are lucky, you can resaw, take advantage of reduced drying time and still get some good stock out of it. Sticking, out of the sun, with protection from rain etc. will help reduce the problems.
Depends on the grade and what you want to use it for. If it has been _indoors_ and stickered, you should see most of what you want by now. Air drying is better for prevention of honeycomb, in my experience. Doggone kiln operators tend to push it a bit.
Cut for legs and such, with a winter in a heated environment should give you stability by March.
Oh yes
Depends on how it was sawn. If it's oak, then it might be quarter sawn (for the figure) and this will dry quite stably as 1" and give a useful board.
If it's flat-sawn, then it will cup slightly. I'd disagree with Dave W here (certainly for my local oaks) and I don't find that it's prone to twist, but it always has the "rings straightening" effect. Because of this, the most efficient thickness to saw to is 2". This allows you to resaw, plane off the cupping and still get two good boards out of it. You're removing the "cupping losses" from two faces. If however you saw to 1" and dry it, then you have to take this cupping loss from four faces. 2" drying will give you two 3/4" boards, 1" drying will only give you 1/2" boards.
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