Cherry Planks

[martyphee]

Some pictures of the cherry I picked up yesterday. Questions at the end.



After






The wood was tarped and air dried for 2+ years. Rough size was 2.5" and 2". My plans are to make them into my bar top. 6' long 22" wide. My thoughts are to take them downstairs for a week and see if they move at all. Their 12" x 72+" x 1.5+". I left them big so in case they move. Is a week enough in a dry basement? How long do you think it will take to darken again? Obviously from the picture you can see that their much lighter than the other cherry around it.

[Jim Becker]

What you really need to do is put a moisture meter on them to see where they are at for MC. When you say the wood was "tarped", do you mean just on top, or all around? If the latter, it's probably still pretty wet since there would have been inadequate air flow through the pile to dry at optimal rates...and that's thick stuff. A week in a dry basement isn't going to radically affect MC...

[martyphee]

I didn't think so.

It was tarped just on top and stickered. I was thinking of running out a getting a meter.

[Al Weber]

You need a moisture meter because there is no way to predict moisture content unless you know when the tree was felled, whether it was alive or dead, where it was dried (temperature and humidity), etc. As to how long it will take to redevelop the color, it depends on how much sunlight it gets (and to some extent on oxygen as well). Generally I get good color development in bright sunlight exposure in about 10-14 days (summer time- longer in winter). But it depends on the wood also. That is nice looking wood.

[Pete Brown]

I had 2 - 2 1/2" thick soft maple from a dealer in PA. It had been in one of their large storage sheds for quite some time.

I resawed it oversize, cut to manageable lengths, took the planer to the other side a bit, stickered and stacked it in my basement with two fans on one end and a dehumidifer on the other.

After several weeks of that (I forget the exact time, but it was longer than a month), the moisture content dropped enough for me to work the wood.

It was originally air dried then kiln-dried, but the outside did soak up some extra moisture from being in storage for so long.

The wood has been good to me (no checks or oddities), but YMMV.

I have the Mini Ligno DX/C and it has worked very well. Beware of what you get out of the overly cheap moisture meters.

Pete