How to season your own wood?

[ElgaKoster]

Because I love having birds in my garden, we planted a lot of indigenous fruit bearing trees and shrubs in our garden. Of course they need pruning from time to time and so far two of them have very fine closed grains and I would like to see if they are any good for miniature furniture making. The pieces are not big, about 3 - 4" in diameter including the bark, and now I am wondering how to season and store the wood. Do I leave them just as they are or cut the bark off and the pieces into smaller lengths.

Winter is starting here which is very dry and temperatures except for cold spells vary between 5 degrees Celsius in the morning up to 25 degrees at noon (41 - 77 degrees Fahrenheit), I am planning on storing this in the garage which doesn't even have a ceiling, so temperatures fluctuate quite a bit just in one day. Otherwise if that is too extreme I guess I can find a spot in my kitchen which has underfloor heating and the one room in the house that is fairly stable temperature wise.

[Wm. R. Robertson]

I ended up with some of the wood the famous ship model builder August Crabtree had cut many years ago, now nearly 80 years! Oh my is time flying.... Anyway he had cut a lot of fruit woods, limbs about the size of yours. He debarked them, band sawed them to about 1/2" slabs and painted the ends to prevent checking. These pieces then air dried an most do have some twist to them but they are quite stable.

I was once told that for air drying any where 1 to 10 years per inch thickness is good. I have a bunch of cherry and walnut that were old trees that were shown on a 1727 survey, these were cut and sawn in 1941 or 2 and stickard and stacked in a barn. I bought it in the 80's... A whole truck load!... I still have some 22" wide cherry and a stack of walnut boards 18" wide by 10 feet long.

[Pete Boorum]

Because most water is removed,or added, to wood through the end grain, the shorter pieces will dry fastest.  Treating the end grain slows the process but also reduces checking.  Uncured wood is called green and is only used in practice by some turners who prefer it.

The big issue full scale furniture makers have with wood moisture content is movement.  Wood shrinks, or swells,  much more across the grain that along the grain.  It also moves more following the rings that perpendicular to the rings.  This is one of the reasons why we prefer quarter sawn boardsl

for thin sections .  It cups less than flat sawn.  That's another subject!

 

In any case, it is a little hard to tell when the wood is dry enough to work and carving presents different issures that fitting parts.  Regardless how you dry the wood keep it for at least two weeks in the same environment where you are going to work it.

 

Keep in mind  air dried wood always has more mosture in the center that the faces in a dry heated environment.  (Kiln dried lumber is opposite and the dryest part is in the center.)  If you resaw either you usually get some cupping. Resting short sections in you shop helps to reduce this.

 

 

[ElgaKoster]

Thank you Bill and Pete, I am not going to work with wood for quite a while, so it will have time to dry out.

[Josje Veenenbos]

Interesting, as I too have saved a couple of fruit trees and big branches for future use.