Wood Kiln

When you buy wood from a saw mill, it’s likely still “green” - very wet on the inside. Sometimes above 35% moisture. for reference, firewood is best around 10% (so it burns, but burns slowly). Typically you want to be building using wood that is less than 10%.

A lot of wood that you buy from Home Depot or Lowe’s is “kiln dried”, which means the wood was is a temperature controlled space and the moisture removed.

You can also air dry wood, which takes much longer, sometimes years.

In order to speed up the drying process for the Fireplace Rocker, I built a small kiln. It’s basically a sealed plastic enclosure that contains a heater, fan and dehumidifier. It allows me to dry out rough milled lumber in my own garage.

Later, I added a zipper to make things easier to access.

This was done rather quickly for the Fireplace Rocker project, the next iteration is to mount it to the wall - so it takes up less space.