Drying wet wood vs drying green wood?

[bertterbo]

I have some boards I have purchased that are about 3" thick and are completely dry. I plan to cut them into blanks at some point.

I don't have anywhere to store them, so plan to keep them outside. If they were to get rained on and soaked, how long would they then take to dry?

I can of course throw a sheet of over them, whilst still trying to get good air circulation, but you often see people just leaving them out in the elements?

 

[D_W]

If they get very wet, it won't be just a matter of drying, they will expand and go through the same thing they would have anew (when cut). Like severe cupping and splitting at the ends if the wood is a type that releases moisture quickly through end grain (beech, etc).

They will also have the potential to get mold or fungus or any other number of things that will result in wood that's not very good when you go to use it, even if it has dried again.

It's not uncommon for wood in the US to be stored in sheds with one face exposed to the elements and the top of the pile covered. It usually results in a lot of waste if the storage isn't very short term.

 

[Jacob]

Not a good idea but "wet" wood which was seasoned dries a lot quicker than seasoning from freshly cut. Oddly enough wood can be seasoned in water. What is Seasoning of Timber? Methods of Seasoning of Timber.

 

[whereistheceilidh]

Suggest seal the ends & cover it ....but not with a dark fabric if poss.
Sit them on something that keeps them off the ground & that does not wick water up into boards.
They may move a bit depending on where you are.
What wood is it?

 

[MARK.B.]

Not a good idea but "wet" wood which was seasoned dries a lot quicker than seasoning from freshly cut. Oddly enough wood can be seasoned in water. What is Seasoning of Timber? Methods of Seasoning of Timber.

Watched a logging program once where they pulled trees out of a swamp after being submerged for years, i forget the species but apparently they got a premium price from the sawmills

 

[D_W]

Watched a logging program once where they pulled trees out of a swamp after being submerged for years, i forget the species but apparently they got a premium price from the sawmills

Fairly common here. The TV show if it was on cable was probably in the american south to make it more marketable to foreigners. There is a lot of sunken spruce in the pacific northwest, or at least was. I've used some of it:



The spruce wasn't expensive, but it's a little more dense than typical. I would imagine woods that have value for historically correct restoration could bring a lot more. this billet (quartered, one piece) to make a guitar body cost maybe a little less than it would with new wood from a miller, but mostly because it would've been plentiful in the old log and not in the newer stuff.

It's about as dense as true mahogany.

key, as you probably know, is that the logs have to get into silt/muddy/deep water spaces where there's no oxygen.

 

[pe2dave]

Watched a logging program once where they pulled trees out of a swamp after being submerged for years, i forget the species but apparently they got a premium price from the sawmills

I've heard this one, seems the lack of oxygen and 'time' provides a premium timber.

 

[Jacob]

Bog wood Bog-wood - Wikipedia

 

[MARK.B.]

Bog wood Bog-wood - Wikipedia

Jacob the trees in the program i watched were only submerged in water and not buried under peat so i don't know if that makes a difference ,could be like pe2dave says about lack of oxygen being a contributing factor in both cases.

 

[Jacob]

Jacob the trees in the program i watched were only submerged in water and not buried under peat so i don't know if that makes a difference ,could be like pe2dave says about lack of oxygen being a contributing factor in both cases.

Yes water seasoning is different Seasoning of Timber | Seasoning of Wood | Timber Seasoning | Natural Seasoning of Timber | Artificial Seasoning of Timber

 

[D_W]

Jacob the trees in the program i watched were only submerged in water and not buried under peat so i don't know if that makes a difference ,could be like pe2dave says about lack of oxygen being a contributing factor in both cases.

I think some of the great lakes trees here never got buried, they just ended up low enough to settle in the base of the lakes at depths where there's little oxygen. Not sure what those are, but I have unintentionally had some of that maple because it was used to make block banjo rims - think segmented turnings. They're usually plywood, and despite all of the touting of the mystical properties of "timeless timber", they weren't any better than a bent ply rim - which itself sounds just fine. The wood itself was marketed for a while, but I haven't seen it lately. There's probably a whole lot more to fish out if a buyer who will make it worthwhile can be found.

Separate from that, the draw for us as woodworkers - to me at least - is not so much the composition of the wood, but to get huge clear first growth trunks.

I watched a pine sawyer in NC cut huge wide slabs on his mill and have his wife (who would running the outfeed end of the mill) set them aside. They must've been 30" wide and clear....

.....and then he ran the slabs in a stack down the saw again and cut them into dimensional lumber and said "everyone cringes when I do this, and everyone oohs and ahs at the wide boards, but they sit in the yard and nobody buys them"

 

[D_W]

Jacob the trees in the program i watched were only submerged in water and not buried under peat so i don't know if that makes a difference ,could be like pe2dave says about lack of oxygen being a contributing factor in both cases.

It'd be super awesome if an experienced woodworker who understood chemistry and worked by hand and machine both would get some of this stuff, work it, and have it analyzed to see what happens in different cases.

But I can almost guarantee that it will never be as economically valuable as writing neat script on a banjo rim "timeless timber" and upcharging $200 just for the rim.

I'd be curious to know. The guitar made above out of spruce, I would only notice the weight of the finished wood and I've had other sinker spruce from the same seller that isn't as dense. So I think the density has more to do with the original tree. I don't notice anything about the working properties - it's like fresh wood without any of the powdery between-ring feel or really hard rings that dried out old spruce or fir can have.