I have an opportunity to purchase 200 board feet of "air dried" white oak for about $1.50 per board foot. The wood has been air drying for
11 months and I went there with a meter and it has an adjusted for temperature moisture content of 8%. It is rough cut to 4/4 but I have a planer so that is not an issue.
I want to make a roll top desk and my question is simply am I making a mistake in not getting kiln dried lumber. What can I expect after it begins to dry in the home after the desk is made?
oak for about $1.50 per board foot. The wood has been air drying for
11 months and I went there with a meter and it has an adjusted for temperature moisture content of 8%. It is rough cut to 4/4 but I have a planer so that is not an issue.
I want to make a roll top desk and my question is simply am I making a mistake in not getting kiln dried lumber. What can I expect after it begins to dry in the home after the desk is made?
I've made stuff with air dried walnut and cherry, seems the colors are much brighter than kiln dried. I read somewhere that kiln dried lumber gets steamed at some point in the process, bleeding out some of the natural dyes.
That price ? So get it. Work out what to do with it later.
Sounds a little young as yet. But then I've rarely bought timber in that quantity and started using it immediately. Stack and sticker it in similar target humidity to where the finished piece is going to be used, then ignore it for a few months.
8% humidity sounds unusually low that quickly, but then it's a funny time of year.
Personally I take almost no interest in moisture content at all. I don't believe it's possible to measure it accurately enough and the practical effects are better if you concentrate on air humidity and allowing enough time for equilibrium (read Hoadley for why this works).
I'd prefer to saw it to 8/4 first. There's always some cupping in drying and you lose less timber by flattening two sides then re-sawing it than you do by having to flatten four sides on an equivalenet quantity of timber.
You'll be wanting a chip collector too, if you have that much to thickness. Know any potters ? One has just taken all my oak planer shavings to use for raku firing.
Kiln dried timber is _NOT_ better. For softwoods in particular it may be quicker (cheaper), more predictable (cheaper) and may "set" some resins. But mainly it's there to make it cheaper.
If this is your first time using a large quantity of "primo" timber like this, then a copy of Hoadley's "Understanding Wood" would be a very good thing to read through beforehand.
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