Results of experiment

[Battenkiller]

That is a really sharp lookin vest.

Oh, yeah... killer vest. Will we all get one at the cookout?

 

[oldspark]

Well my thought of settling was the pieces shifted after being stacked not settled into the ground, I know there has to be some because when the wood shrinks it settles.

 

[vvvv]

is wet wood kinda spongy? will the weight of the wood above it result in an indentation ?

 

[firefighterjake]

That is a really sharp lookin vest.

Oh, yeah... killer vest. Will we all get one at the cookout?

I hear Dennis is raffling it off as a consolation prize to the hearth.com members who don't win the Woodstock woodstove.

 

[ckarotka]

I have to laugh looking back at this discussion. We are so obsessed with wood we are arguing about how much wood shrinks or not, and how humidity effects firewood seasoning. It's funny to me because this wood will never see a presidents/king or queens desk, never be passed down to the next generation or placed in a museum for the world to admire....we're gonna burn it!

We know it takes X hours at X temp to dry firewood in a kiln. My kiln is my backyard, difference being I can't control all the variables.
Maybe the circulatory system of wood does shut down. But then if it does how does the water get out? The water has to get released somehow, so if water can get out, water can get in.


Then looking at the chart from my previous post. At 90% humidity the driest wood will be at any temp between 40-90*F is around 20%.
The MC of the wood will then go up and down based on RH.

So if it was kiln dried to 10% then stored in a 90% humid building the wood would eventually gain moisture up to around 20%.
So water gets in. How fast? Couldn't find any answers to that one.

Modern kilns from what I've read, all use dehumidifiers in them because it makes them more efficient. So I believe that humidity does slow down the drying process.

By letting our wood season for years, we should have enough good seasoning days to counterbalance the bad seasoning days until it reaches the equilibrium point. From this point on it's all up to RH to determine how dry it will be at the time of burning.

Charlie

 

[wendell]

Dennis, I'm trying to figure out how a guy as nice as you is never smiling in any of the pictures you post. ;-)

 

[Delta-T]

I have to laugh looking back at this discussion. We are so obsessed with wood we are arguing about how much wood shrinks....

Charlie

Well, "argue" might be a strong word, but certainly a heated discussion that might turn into argument if we add drinking....
I dont know so much about wood piles, but dag nabbit I hate having to adjust the action on my guitars every 6 months....
stupid wooden necks...

 

[ckarotka]

Well, "argue" might be a strong word, but certainly a heated discussion.......


True. I love the way this site offers the chance to do this. Right or wrong everyones intentions are to better one another in a positive woodburing or musical way. :coolsmile: Good stuff!!


Charlie

 

[Battenkiller]

I dont know so much about wood piles, but dag nabbit I hate having to adjust the action on my guitars every 6 months....stupid wooden necks...

No complaints here, it put shoes on the kids and food on the table for over 30 years.

Remember those Applause guitars put out by Ovation way back when? Solid aluminum necks with milled out frets (couldn't be re-fretted), composite bowl backs, high-tech ply tops glued together with that Charlie Kamen space-age adhesive. No warped necks on those puppies. A friend owned one back in the 70s. The guy would come home from work and play and play and drink beer and play some more. One time he went to take a leak and when he came back, his guitar-widow wife had tossed it out the third story window. She said it bounced about ten feet, but except for a few scratches, it was still quite playable. Didn't make any money on that one.

 

[quads]

I have to laugh looking back at this discussion. We are so obsessed with wood we are arguing about how much wood shrinks or not, and how humidity effects firewood seasoning........

Charlie

Ha ha! It's nothing new, similar discussions have been taking place on Hearth.com for many years. Even way back when it had the old type bulletin board. It's all part of the fun.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Yes, I think there has been no arguing about this thread but much discussion.

Simply put, my experience does not match the charts one can find. So do I believe the chart or do I believe what I can actually see happening? As for me, I know what the measurement was when I stacked the wood and I also know what that measurement is now. The wood has not been moved and to my knowledge nobody cut a piece out of my tape measure. I even used the same tape measure. There is a difference in the height of the stack now vs what that stack measured when stacked.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

perhaps your tape measure has lost a few MC% points and has shrunk? You may also have a classic infestation of Irish Wood Pile Brownies. These little guys come in at night and move splits around, they think they're funny, but they're not.
That is a really sharp lookin vest.

Maybe the best theory yet!

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I hear Dennis is raffling it off as a consolation prize to the hearth.com members who don't win the Woodstock woodstove.

Get them while they are hot. Only $10.00 per ticket. How many would you like Jake?

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Dennis, I'm trying to figure out how a guy as nice as you is never smiling in any of the pictures you post. ;-)

After all that stacking, I was tired. I hadn't even had time for a beer yet.

 

[firefighterjake]

I hear Dennis is raffling it off as a consolation prize to the hearth.com members who don't win the Woodstock woodstove.

Get them while they are hot. Only $10.00 per ticket. How many would you like Jake?

What? No volume discount? 6 tickets for $50? Besides . . . I figured the price would be 1 stick of seasoned white oak per ticket.

 

[Battenkiller]

Simply put, my experience does not match the charts one can find. So do I believe the chart or do I believe what I can actually see happening? As for me, I know what the measurement was when I stacked the wood and I also know what that measurement is now. The wood has not been moved and to my knowledge nobody cut a piece out of my tape measure. I even used the same tape measure. There is a difference in the height of the stack now vs what that stack measured when stacked.

We're not wood scientists, so for the large part, we all believe what we observe. If we measure a stack of wood and it has shrunk by 15% in height, the logic for most folks would be:


1.My wood has been sitting stacked for a year.
2.Wood stacked outdoors for a year dries considerably.
3.Wood shrinks when it dries.
4.My stacks have shrunk since I last measured them.


Therefore... since my stacks have shrunk 15% in height, my wood shrinks about 15% when it dries.


But a scientist would admonish you that, "Correlation does not prove causation." If we were real scientists, good scientists, we would:


1.Do our experiment.
2.Carefully observe the outcome.
3.Dutifully record the data.
4.Absolutely refuse to draw conclusions from the data.



This doesn't work for us in the real world we live in because we need results, and we need them now. So we jump to conclusions, even if they might not be correct. And we all have a strong tendency to stick to these conclusions, because it wouldn't suit to just accept whatever someone else said to try to change our minds. How would we ever get on with our lives by doing that? So we stick to our guns, and when other folks corroborate what we believe, we form a consensus reality that is hard to shake with mere facts. I am as guilty of this as the next guy, so I'm not up on a soapbox here telling you you're all whacked. All I can say is that if I'm going to build a shelter in the woods, I'll use my gut on how sturdy to make the roof, but if I want to build a house, I'll go right to the established span tables and figure out exactly what grade of wood I need and what size trusses I should use. If we can't trust someone to get us good data on this, we'd all need to be scientists and engineers and designers.

So I trust the wood shrinkage tables, because they were gathered from probably dozens of carefully controlled experiments over the course of many years. I trust this data a lot more than I'd ever trust those BTU charts that everybody is always waving about, because shrinkage data is a lot easier to gather and replicate than combustion data, and it is always done in the same manner, simply by taking before and after measurements... just like you did with your wood stacks.


So for me, all I can say is that I trust your measurements completely, but I won't ascribe your explanation of shrinkage through drying as the sole cause. It just doesn't jive with the data I have, or with my own personal observations for that matter. For example:



I just went out to my wood shed to measure the roughsawn white pine siding I installed this spring. These boards were so wet that I had to make three loads with my station wagon because they were too heavy to get all at once. As you can see, they have dried to a nice 12% MC as measured with my handy-dandy HF meter. I know for a fact that they were all cut 10" wide when I bought them, and yet now they are only 9 3/4" wide. These boards were nailed on in traditional board-and-batten style, with only one edge nailed and the other edge free to expand and contract underneath the batten. As you see, they only shrunk a couple percent over that time. If they had shrunk by 15%, they would be 8 1/2" wide, and there would be 1 1/2" gaps between them. Clearly, there are not.


I'm trying not to be wise ass with all of this stuff. In the past, I may have come across as sanctimonious to some here because they can't see the twinkle in my eye. I'm simply trying to add to the knowledge base. Maybe it will help some folks here.


A good friend used to have this as his credo: "What the eyes see, the heart must believe."


No doubt, that's the way it is for us... but it doesn't make it the truth.