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Your log sits for at least a couple of weeks in order to remove initial moisture content, minimize warp and wood tension.
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Your lumber is carefully stacked in the kiln with air circulation space between each layer.
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Heated air circulates above, below, and around each board and gradually dries your lumber to its optimum moisture content.
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Your lumber starts at 90 degrees and is gradually increased to 140 degrees Fahrenheit to kill insects, ants, and bugs as well as set resin for pine.
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Your lumber is heated for approximately 30 days per inch of thickness to reduce moisture content to around 6-8%.
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Our kiln cycles are typically 60 days as we generally have at least some two inch material inside.
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Your now fully dried lumber is ready for the next step (planing or whatever you have in store).
Bear Creek Hardwoods has two kilns. We started with a cargo container which we insulated with spray foam and hooked up to our boiler system for heat to convert to a kiln.
Milled Lumber Stacked in the Kiln and Ready to be Dried
While this kiln worked well, we found it was too small for all the wood we wanted to dry. We designed a building exclusively as a kiln. It is 24 x30 foot x 18 feet tall building and again used spray foam and hooked to our boiler for heat.
Kiln starting to be filled