Wood and Controlled Climate

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Pieter Gaskin

Thanks Matthew,
Yes I did store them together in the house.Laid nice and flat.Guess there may have been more moisture in the wood than advertised.The place I buy my wood from kiln dries their own.

You can stick a moisture inside the already split wood or at the ends before splitting to tell if it is from 6-8% which is ok for Kiln Dried. Some species are fine Air Dried a 8-10% or sometimes more but long indoor storage may dry it even lower to 6%. Since the room Humidity is usually 20-60% on average you can expect all dried wood to gain 'surface' moisture and be only drier on the inside. This is where long term indoor drying comes in handy as we call this acclimation.

All wood has some tension inside of it. When wood is sawn off of a log it tends to 'cup' AWAY from the heart of the tree. That's why you see boards having a inner cupped surface and outer humped surface. On Maple boards, the cupped surface is from the outer side of the log and usually has better color and maybe better figure depending.

When wood is re-sawn especially kiln dried, it often 'springs' or gradually 'creeps'. Air dried wood moves less and acclimated kiln dried wood somewhere in between. In our shop, we use fairly old stored wood for all of our Bass components whether it's Body or Neck parts. This ensures stability. Also, we don't usually split wood unless we are about to glue it up right away either. When we do split tops and do not glue up the laminates within the same day, we flat stack them so they don't warp or cup out of shape. Then on the other hand, some pieces of wood just have a mind of their own and do the unexpected. That's the joy of wood working, You never know what you're gonna get..lol

Have you seen our on-line tour and wood stocking methods?

Also, here are some other wood related links from our website;
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/woodpa...econtents.html
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/sawmill/sawdefault.html
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/models...mycontents.htm
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/md/default.htm
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/woodpa...lnutgrades.htm