Wood Shrinkage

Kind of curious if anyone knows how much freshly cut and split firewood will shrink as it drys. I never noticed this before and I guess there could be lots of variables in this. But whats the average, 10%, 20%. If I have some 20" fresh Oak splits will they shrink to 19"?

In that thread about the Holzhausen they say to put a mark on your pole at 80%, and when the wood is ready you will see the mark. If you have a 8' pole 80% is 6.4. That seems like alot of shrinkage?

So your all wet?

Wood always shrinks more when placed in cold water... I find it shrinks about 40-50%


-- Mike



Aw Christ, what a gimme topic that was

You HAD to know you'd get responses like this... all the George Costanza's of the world are going to crawl out of the WOODworks...

LMAO!! Sure you were!! :lol:

I would say 6 to 10 percent.

Dylan doesn't think so, but he's wrong.

Dylan,
I was talking about firewood, not kindling!

You guys are bad, redifines greenwood.

elaine jerry sombody tell her about srinkage. the water was freezing cold

Elaine: "You mean they shrink when they get cold?"
Jerry: "Like a frightened turtle."

You guys are awful. Disgusting, crude, low brow sense of humor, low class, and I'm really mad that you all beat me to evey one of those comments. Now lets talk about how my piles are shrinking.

Oh my god elaine elaine!!

Shrinkage does occure, I have had piles fall over and had to restack. What percentage I don't know, IT not noticable upon sight

Shrinkage occurs in other than cold water. In fact, in the opposite.

Consider this: a young verile man was in a "hot tub" with an attractive willing lady who noticed the water temperature reaching 104* F. She exclaimed, "Oh, the water's much too hot!" Whereupon he, feeling his oats, asked "Well why is that, cutie?" "My experience", she explained, "is that in these tubs, no matter how high your desire, no matter how manly you think you are, in 104* F water, you men all inevitably suffer from "the boiled noodle" effect."

Sorry.

Also, logs shrink mostly, I understand, in their diameter, not lengthwise. Ask anyone who has built a log home.

Aye,
Marty

Terse summary of shrinkage:

Though shrinkage values vary widely among woods, tangential shrinkage averages about 8%; radial shrinkage, about 4%.

More than you ever wanted to know about shrinkage:

http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/publications/articles/detailing_for_wood_shrinkage.html

http://www.city-net.com/albertfp/shrink.htm

I dunno, but my mother loves Hampton tomatoes. She's absolutely nuts for Hampton tomatoes!

Personally, I think Jersey tomatoes are where its at :coolsmile:

-- Mike

The odd part being, of course, there's no such thing as a Hampton tomato... and on that note, with all the vineyards around here now, there's almost no such thing as a Long Island potato anymore.