Is pine generally kiln dried?

I thought you had to be trolling; after all, once it has been used, there is no difference between kiln dried and air dried wood. So, being hooked, I did a google search and found you are almost right.

You can't let them chew on fresh pine. Pine in your futon frame is dry, not fresh. How it got dry does not matter.

FALSE. Kiln-dried wood is brought to high temperatures during the drying process, which definitely produces chemical and physical changes in the wood.

This may or may not be true, depending on the specific nature of the danger to the critter from chewing on fresh pine. For example, it's possible (even likely) that the high temperatures of kiln drying cause chemical changes in the resin which result in reducing its toxicity. These changes would *not* occur during air drying, and thus air-dried pine might present the same hazards as fresh.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

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Not necessarily. Low temperature kiln's are used, although I would admit that it is unlikely that the softwood you buy from the borg was done that way; large scale drying of softwood is indeed often done at higher temperatures, soemthing like 180-240 F.

PK

Yes. Whether that translates to safe for the animal I can't answer as don't know what it takes to make it so...

Of course, it's also quite possible the secondary wood is something like poplar or other "white wood". Pine these days is actually fairly expensive relative to some alternatives.

Such as? Can you give me some examples?

A number of websites said "pine" (no descriptive) was okay for cages, but "kiln dried pine" shavings had to be used for bedding. Another website said that "fresh pine" was dangerous. Presumably one might, without the caution, use "fresh pine" for bedding but not for construction; as that is alway dried in some manner.

My conclusion that "fresh pine" is dangerous, but "dried pine" is okay without distinction as to the drying method. No?

toller wrote: ...

Impossible to say from that detailed analysis... :)

I'd guess the only problem would be a sizable ingestion of "fresh" resin-laden material as would most likely only be likely w/ the bedding owing to the smaller initial size.

The futon is about 12 years old, if that makes a diff. I need a new digital cam or else I've have posted a pic link. It seems as though the jury is still out on whether it is safe. The sites I see say kiln dried whenever they specify. I haven't seen any that say pine is OK if it has been sitting around for awhile.

Thanks for all the thoughts, and no I'm NOT trolling! :)

dwhite

But you notice they always specify on shavings and never on lumber.

But they do sometimes. Here is a site:

Another site says that fruit tree wood is poisonous to chins, but untreated kiln-dried white pine is the best.

So, there is plenty of discussion about kiln-dried other than for shavings.

thanks, dwhite

Anything that

I'll bet the culpret is turpenies. The lignens and other resins in pine are very thermaly stablen and would not undergo chemical change in a kiln. Some turpentine would be distilled off in a kiln at 180 F. The same process would occure at room temperature over a few years. Freshly cut (or machined as in shaveings) pine might be another thing. I will look up a MSDS for turpentine and get back to you with a LD50.

I think you will find that the kiln dried caveat probably came from someone's experience using fresh material (whole ground up tree limbs that include bark, needles and lots of resin. It is unlikely that your wood frame contains enough resin to affect the animal. More likely is that he weakens the frame and you sit down and crush him.

I get the same feeling. This furniture is over a decade old and the wood is thin, so you would think things like turpentines would be gone by now.

thanks, dwhite

I'd say it's unlikely the softwood you buy from the borg was ever in the same county as a kiln.

Now having experienced said wood, I would be inclined to agree with you; however they *claim* it is kiln dried. Now you want wet, try the PT stuff; *that* is wet. 'round here, the decking cedar is also wet I think; major shrinkage and kinda messy to deal with.

PK

Sure. Here's one that's been discussed here several times. Kiln-dried black walnut is dark brown; air-dried black walnut is dark brown with a distinct purple cast that is utterly absent in kiln-dried walnut. The difference is due to temperature-induced chemical changes in the wood.

If your own research shows that "kiln dried pine shavings had to be used for bedding" why would you suppose that the drying method makes no difference? That conclusion, even though possibly correct, is *obviously* unsupported by the evidence you have cited so far.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

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Mark & Juanita wrote: ...

No, it certainly is kiln-dried, just to construction standards and rapidly, not to hardwood/furniture standards...if it were fresh cut undried it would definitely be much wetter.

You may be thinking of treated which will have residual non-natural moisture from the treating process...

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Not necessarily so...the purple cast come through kiln drying (I have some on hand), but not if the kiln steams it to blend in the the sapwood color...

woodbutcher wrote: ...

I was going to suggest a second as a test animal myself...That would establish a 50-th percentile, right? :)

I was wrong on the turpentine bet. The LD50 (the amount it takes to kill 50% of the test animals) for rats is 3700 - 5000mg/Kg. That means that of rats eating about 0.4% of their body weight of pure turpentine