Battenkiller said:skyline said:Stick it next to your stove with a big "Do not Burn" sign. You'll know it's dry when you can stick it in the convection oven over night and it doesn't lose any more weight. Once this is done you can monitor any split you originally weighed and calculate its moisture content by assuming the same starting moisture content.
Skyline, you can leave that split next to the stove until the cows come home. You won't be able to drive off the last bit of water without raising the temp of the wood up to 212º. Most you'll get it down to is about 6% MC, and that will take weeks. For analysis purposes, you need to be able to quickly get it down to 0% MC.
Although you really have no choice but to assume all splits have the same starting moisture content, nothing could be further from the truth. Even within an individual tree, green MC can vary considerably. Best thing would be to determine the starting MC of a large number of randomly selected pieces using the oven method, then averaging them all. My band saw would make quick work of acquiring these samples.
Oh, I do grams, even milligrams when needed. I scooped up an analytical balance and a triple-beam gram scale when the lab I was working in got lazy and went to all digital scales. The scale in the photo is just an old produce scale I use to measure ultralight canoes (check out the photo) while I'm building them. I'll definitely use metric weights/measures come data collection/analysis time. Then I'll have to convert everything to pounds so I can present the results in BTUs to the woodburning set, but I'll use a spread sheet to do that when the time comes.
It's bad enough you have the perfect firewood drying setup, but now you have to go tease me with my boat in your basement too! I'd rather do all the experiments so you use your bandsaw building my canoe %-P . Just how light is it?
Yeah I knew it wouldn't dry a split completely next to the stove until you get tired of waiting and start using the oven. I might skip the microwave and just put the wood in the oven when I want to add "wood seasoning" to my bread. While it would be nice to know the absolute dry weight right away, I can get away monitoring water loss for several weeks if not months before knowing the dry weight to calculate its moisture content correctly. I'm not really worried about the variability in my splits as long as I pick some representative of the pile or at least bracket it. I'm mostly interested in how the pile progresses in drying under different storage conditions. For that matter I could probably get away with just using published moisture contents for my species although I'm sure that varies a bunch.
While the overall trend is quick at first and then a gradual slow down in moisture loss, I'm thinking it is somewhat episodic under outdoor conditions. A couple of calm wet days and the splits might lose nothing or actually gain a bit, but some dry windy ones and they lose a bunch and perhaps every night in certain months they may lose very little. I'm hoping the right shed design will always keep them dry, allow good air flow and add some solar heat during the day and perhaps some convective airflow during the night as well. Reminds me of those boot dryers.
I'm just suspicious that wood in a common setup with tarp over the top with bare ground below, or even in a heap hausen isn't drying for much of the time it's stacked and that is why it takes so long. A few more guys out there with scales could shed some light on this. A cheap place to get them is here: http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/
Cheers to all and keep sharing your data.