Reply To: Wood Moisture and Acclimation (Midwest)
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Hi Ben,
As already mentioned, a moisture meter is handy. They’re not, however, essential and you can get by with a set of bathroom scales.
Bring the wood into your shop and weigh it straight away. Then weigh it every week until you get a few almost identical readings. At that point, you know the wood is in equilibrium with your shop environment.
Weighing the wood is arguably more reliable than a moisture meter as the moisture meter pins only go 1/8″ or so into the wood. The scales will take the whole board into account.
Again… rough sawn and moisture content are independent. Rough sawn timber can be kiln dried or air dried. I recently picked up a huge slab of yew that the seller had had sitting in his timber shed for around 25 years, and the tree had been felled some time before he acquired it, so it’s pretty well dried despite being rough sawn.
I’m afraid I can’t help with the huge swings in humidity. We don’t get anything like that here in the UK!
George.