# Drying in basement



## [email protected] (Jul 14, 2009)

Hello All,
I cut and stickered 400 BF of 4/4 cherry. I put it in my basement to dry 3 weeks ago. I figured I could dry it faster by putting a dehumidifyer and a small heater with it. The average temp. was 60 F. 
To my surprize it has already dried to 9 to 12 % moisture. (I use a Wagner pinless meter). Is this normal. I have had walnut in a friends Nyle kiln for 7 weeks. It is just now dry, but it did have some 8/4 with 4/4. Why did it dry so fast. By the way only 2 boards warped. and 3 cupped. I thought that was good. 

Thank for the help. Woodman58


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## hancockj (Jul 2, 2009)

*I had the same question...*

I just never asked. I dont recall how many board feet of 5/4 maple i had stickered in my basement, but, it was below 7% in a really short time (meter would not give me a reading it was so dry). It was probably about 300-500 BF. I have a dehumidifier in there and heat. I only run the heat when I am down there working. I also did run a fan on it for about the first week. My wood did not move very much at all when drying. After I used some of it I took it off the stickers and put it up on the lumber rack. Almost all the remaining boards have since cupped and a couple bowed and twisted.


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## Gerry KIERNAN (Apr 20, 2007)

Thinner boards will dry faster than thicker boards. Having a dehumidifier in the area certainly helps. You will probably want to get the lumber down to 6 to 8% before building any thing.


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## TexasTimbers (Oct 17, 2006)

Woodman, 

That does sound about right if it were in a good kiln with proper airflow, but it doesn't sound like to you had any airflow across the boards. Is that 9 to 12% just a board or two on the top of the stack? 

12% on the outside of a top layer or two without any airflow through the covered boards, they could be somewhat higher. And even if all the boards are in that range, it could be another week or so getting from 12% to 6%. Without proper airflow it could be a while before they all reach it. 

Unless your shop is climate controlled and you're going to build immediately, the lumber is going to go back to EMC before you use it. Does it need to be 6% to build with? It depends on what you're going to build. If you're building cabinet doors, table tops, flooring etc. yes you want it below 8% generally, because if your EMC is 12% and you build a raised panel door that will see 6% in the winter in a heated home, you may eventually have problems. 

The thing you haven't done is get the core temp up above 140F for a couple hours to kill any bugs, but I don't know how prone Cherry is to bugs.


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## greg4269ub (Sep 1, 2009)

since i have bought my sawmill in sept i have dried 2 batches of lumber in my basement. (150 BF each time) my basement is finished except a couple of rooms i have to keep a space heater on all the time to keep it at a comfortable level (about 70). the 2 batches i have done came out well with very minimal warping, cupping, or twisting. my drying time to 8% varied depending on which end of the pile the heater was on. the closer to the heater the faster drying time. my second batch was done about 1-2 weeks back now and it is below 6% MC. i never realized how much water a house can absorb and disburse in such a short time. i operate a EBAC LD800 kiln and it takes about 30 days to dry a load to 8% (4/4) i haven't dried anything thicker since i have purchased it. the drying chamber is only 3X10 feet i would suspect that a dry house could absorb more moisture than a smaller kiln could. I'm not an hvac guy but one would imagine that the BTU rating on a furnace (or AC) would be more than a small kiln also. i only bring cool and interesting boards that i want to keep for myself into the basement. its fun to see it every day and think up cool stuff to build with it.


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## kwoodhands (May 1, 2020)

[email protected] said:


> Hello All,
> I cut and stickered 400 BF of 4/4 cherry. I put it in my basement to dry 3 weeks ago. I figured I could dry it faster by putting a dehumidifyer and a small heater with it. The average temp. was 60 F.
> To my surprize it has already dried to 9 to 12 % moisture. (I use a Wagner pinless meter). Is this normal. I have had walnut in a friends Nyle kiln for 7 weeks. It is just now dry, but it did have some 8/4 with 4/4. Why did it dry so fast. By the way only 2 boards warped. and 3 cupped. I thought that was good.
> 
> Thank for the help. Woodman58


20 years ago I cut down and sawed 6 cherry trees that were in the way of a house I built. I sawed the boards to 4/4, 5/4 and some as much as 16/4 stock. I put most of the boards in the loft of my shop where they reached 11% on average in less than a month. I opened windows on each end of the shop and only stickered about 600 bf. The rest were shorts and I just stacked them without stickers. I used paint for the ends. Anchorseal would be ideal but I ran out and did not bother to get more. I still have a couple of hundred board feet of short boards and turning stock left. I did not use a dehumidifier but did use a box fan for a month.
I would guess that less than 10% of the stock was warped or cupped. 
The saw was a sash saw that I built from memory of grandpops sash saw. My saw ran off a gasoline motor that was salvaged from a lawn tractor. Grandpops ran off a water wheel . 
mike


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## djg (Dec 24, 2009)

kwoodhands said:


> .....The saw was a sash saw that I built from memory of grandpops sash saw. My saw ran off a gasoline motor that was salvaged from a lawn tractor. Grandpops ran off a water wheel .
> mike


Old thread, so I don't think the OP will mind if I deviate a little. "Sash Saw"? Pictures? Maybe a brief description on the build. Thanks.


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## kwoodhands (May 1, 2020)

I don't have pictures, sold the saw when I retired 12 years ago. This is a saw that operates with a reciprocal motion, similar to a scroll saw. The sash is a heavy duty window sash that holds 1 or more blades vertically. The sash frame is 3-1/2" wide x 1-3/4" thick and is a rectangle 36" x 36" . The sash frame is joined with M&T and draw pegged.
The blades were cut 32" long from a 1-1/2 tpi bandsaw coil stock. I usually only had 3 blades installed at a time as the motor was only 15 hp. Grandpop could run 5 blades easily at a time . Blades are tensioned with screw eyes thru the holes at each end drilled with a cobalt 3/16" bit. The sash was guided by 4x4 rails bolted and braced to the 34'-0" bed. I used 1-1/2" angle iron for rail guides. The bed rails were 6x6 stock and 6x6 legs. The bed itself were 2x8's nailed perpendicular to the rails.
The saw was heavy, no idea what it weighed but had to be taken apart when the buyer showed up with a low boy trailer. Had to be heavy as the reciprocal motion would bounce the bed if it wasn't heavy.
The reciprocal motion was achieved with a pitman arm. This changes the rotary motion to up& down ( reciprocal).
I heated and bent a length of 1" steel bar to 90° . Then repeated this til I had a Pitman arm shaped like a U with the shaft extending outward on each side of the U. The shaft portions installed into Hickory " bearings" mounted to the 6x6 legs. After 3 years the hickory boxes with holes for the shaft became sloppy and out of round. I installed self aligning ball bearings to the posts instead of the hickory ones. This worked well, no other maintainance to the pitman arm assembly was ever needed again.
I understand that the saw was fairly common before the bandsaw was invented.
I used a winch run from battery power to pull the logs thru the blades. Grandpop used a gear for the log pulling thru the blades. I do not remember how it worked but do recall that it was not a smooth pull. Sort of herky jerky. The winch gives a smooth pull. A good website showing the sash mill and the wooden gears is "Sawing pine with a sash mill." Another is "Leonards Saw mill".
My mill was tiny compared to the websites mills. I built the mill from memory when I needed a lot of lumber and no money to buy it. Nothing much changed.
mike


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