how long?

[steve71]

How long should oak be left to air dry before it is OK to use?

I used french oak which had been air dried for 5 years (so I was informed by the scirie) to make up a 50mm thick kitchen worktop. I then used all the offcuts to knock up a refectory table for the kitchen.

After about 8 -9 months in situ, the worktop remained stable although where I had 90 degree joins these opened by about a mm.

The table had bread board ends which showed about 3mm either end as the planked sections shrunk.

As a comparison, I have a dining table which is english oak and over 60 years old. I have owned this table for about 15 years and it has been stable thro' that time, that is up to the point I spent 3 years in central france - humidity and temp differences. The bread board ends of this table now show about 5mm, that is only since that time in france.

Is this movement completely inevitable?

steve

 

[motownmartin]

I thought it was 1 Year per 1 inch Thickness but I could be wrong.

 

[bjm]

As a general rule wood will air dry at about a year-an-inch. The problem though is that outdoors the wood will never dry below ~16% (in the UK) so needs time to acclimatise indoors to reach it's equilibrium moisture content (emc), which will depend on the general temp/humidity in the room it lives in - eg a sealed centrally heated room will require a lower emc (8-10%) than a draughty intermittently-heated room (12-14%)

Brian

 

[DMD]

Air dry ok for outside, but you need to keep it in its finished environment for at least a month prior to makeup.

 

[9fingers]

If you are going to be ripping the wood into smaller sections for your project, I suggest you do this to rough dimensions after the air drying and during the acclimatisation stage. this will expose new internal surfaces and assist the moisture stabilisation process.

Bob