# Bent Wood



## bugman1954 (Apr 1, 2008)

I picked up 900 bd ft of various hardwoods from the kiln on Monday. Last night I was planning the second stack and I noticed all the boards had a bow in them. The first stack had boards less than 8 ft and the wood was for the most part pretty straight. The second stack had boards ranging in length from almost 14' down to 9' 6". My first thought was they didn't give enough support to the stack and had shorter stacks on top of my stack causing my boards to dry with a bow in them. These kilns can hold 20,000 bdft at a time. Each stack holds 22 layers with 1 X 1 stickers. I used a mock up jig for aligning the stickers and stacking the lumber myself at the yard. There is over 500 bdft of quartersawn white oak that will be usless to sell if I can't fix this. 

Three questions:

1. Can I somehow introduce moisture to the boards and redry them or maybe sticker them with reverse bow and let them eliminate the origional bow? 

2. I don't have any other means to dry my wood, so how should I approach the mill about the problem and my future drying needs? Maybe a Daren kiln is in the future. 

3. My wife says I should just eat it and don't cause a fuss.

Thanks for all your guys input. I really appreciate it. Especially the last blog about bandsaw blades. That was excellent.


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## Julian the woodnut (Nov 5, 2008)

By bow, do you mean it's crowned, cupped , or twisted? I don't see adding moisture helping at all. Sounds like it was dried too fast.


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## Daren (Oct 14, 2006)

The chances of "straightening" warped/bent/cupped/twisted lumber are slim-none IMO. I am surprised 1/4 sawn would move as much, it is inherently more stable. 

And yep, that is why I stopped taking my lumber to the "big kiln" a certain amount of degrade/oops is acceptable and factored in...well that just sucks if _my_ wood was the "oops" :thumbdown:.


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## carlis stephens (Sep 5, 2008)

If the (all) stickers was all not aligned directly on top of each other and other stacks of lumber was put on top it will permantly put a kink in the lumber. I have went to stacking lumber lumber in kiln by hand to avoid that.


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