What? Kiln Dried?

[Matthew Eash]

I needed to make some molding to go around a 5'x3' window for the Swombo. About 1-1/8 x 1-1/4, pretty heavily shaped. The borg supplied a beautiful SPF 2x6x10' - fine grained enough to give nice crisp edges from the shaper. At $5 total, I got about 42 feet of clear molding --much cheaper than stock, even if I could find a pattern that worked.

Question is -- the board was stamped KD, implying that it was kiln dried. It was dry -- dry enough to work for the moldings -- but not like the KD hardwoods I have used. So my question is what constitutes "kiln dried"? Does that imply some fixed moisture content? Or a certain amout of time in the kiln? Or does it vary with type of product?

Matthew

[bridger]

the short answer is it varies with what it is sold for. what you bought was sold for construction. KD standards for construction are pretty wet.

[fredfighter]

It only means that it was dried in a kiln.

Construction lumber IIRC is typically kiln dried to about 12% mc.

Most hardwoods for cabinet work are dried to 6% to 8%.

The person who tells you the lumber is kiln dried should know to what % mc for the lumber he sells.

'Should', does not mean 'will', expecially for the big box stores.

[George]

Below 20% in softwood intended for construction. Your piece sounds like yard grade wood, so it probably means it was once 8%.

What it is now, if it's been out of the kiln for a couple of months, can be estimated by looking at the tables of relative humidity versus moisture content in Hoadley or at the Forest Products Lab site.

Softwood is seldom like hardwood, even the soft hardwoods.

[Lawrence Wasserman]

IIRC KD construction lumber is dried to 19%. For woodworking 7% is usually recommended.

[David F. Eisan]

Kraft Dinner.