Kiln operation help please?

[Marklambert61]

Team,

I'm in the process of building a dehumidification kiln my family was in the refrigeration business for year so I have built my own DH unit.

What I don't know is kiln schedules i.e temp and times for different types of wood.

Can you give me some advice about controlling my kiln?


Mark

 

[Backwood]

How many board feet are you planing on loading at a time ? What kinds of wood ?

 

[woodshop]

There is a lot of good advice as per schedules etc on woodweb.com, on thier drying forum.

 

[Marklambert61]

Kiln

How many board feet are you planing on loading at a time ? What kinds of wood ?

Backwood,

I plan you dry 1000bd at a time currently I'm mostly sawing Oak, Ash, Pine and Black Walnut.

Mark

 

[Backwood]

For a 1000' you should get around 4 gallons of water per 1% of moisture loss per day.
2 - 2.5% per day on the oak. Black ash 7%, white ash 5%. The only pine I have numbers on is eastern white pine and its 12%. And walnut would be 8%.
These numbers are for 4/4 , 8/4 would need to be dried much slower, like 1% for oak and 5% for walnut.
the max temp for oak,ash and walnut above 35% mc is 90* , 25% - 30% is 100*, and below 25% 120*
Pine above 25% 115 , below 25% 120
Then when finished turn the heat up to at least 130 for 24 hours to get the middle of the boards hot enough to kill any bugs. You may or may not need to remove your Dh unit to get it hot enough to kill the bugs ( I do ).