Found a blow down Western Red Cedar the other day which I just love for making kindling. It smells so good! And the boys and friend helped peel the ones I want to use for making drink holders.
Interestingly, you can see in the picture of the 4 rounds, on the left side, where I had just moved the round on the left towards the middle, a wet spot is remaining where the moisture from that round was leaving making the asphalt wet after less than an hour. Nice to see even without splitting the moisture is leaving the rounds. In fact it has lost 158 grams in the last 5 days.
The last picture is of 2 of my Doug fir splits from my drying experiment after 100 days of drying. They are the same length (17.5") but as you can see the split on the right is from higher up in the tree and started out 3.6 lbs. lighter (12.7 lbs (7394g) vs. 15.3 lbs. (5786g)). But since the bigger split on the left has more heart wood, you can imagine it started with a lower MC. In fact the smaller split on the right has lost a total 2708 g or 46.8% of its original weight vs. 2434g (32.9%) for the bigger split. If I do the math and assume they both started at 100% MC, that would mean the smaller split is currently at 6% MC and the larger split is at 34%.
I am sure the bigger split didn't start that high but I thought it might be interesting to some folks to see how much difference there is between 2 splits from the same tree drying in the same conditions after 100 days.
Interestingly, you can see in the picture of the 4 rounds, on the left side, where I had just moved the round on the left towards the middle, a wet spot is remaining where the moisture from that round was leaving making the asphalt wet after less than an hour. Nice to see even without splitting the moisture is leaving the rounds. In fact it has lost 158 grams in the last 5 days.
The last picture is of 2 of my Doug fir splits from my drying experiment after 100 days of drying. They are the same length (17.5") but as you can see the split on the right is from higher up in the tree and started out 3.6 lbs. lighter (12.7 lbs (7394g) vs. 15.3 lbs. (5786g)). But since the bigger split on the left has more heart wood, you can imagine it started with a lower MC. In fact the smaller split on the right has lost a total 2708 g or 46.8% of its original weight vs. 2434g (32.9%) for the bigger split. If I do the math and assume they both started at 100% MC, that would mean the smaller split is currently at 6% MC and the larger split is at 34%.
I am sure the bigger split didn't start that high but I thought it might be interesting to some folks to see how much difference there is between 2 splits from the same tree drying in the same conditions after 100 days.
