Must Watch! Sawmill Lumber Kiln Drying Secrets (#1 Best for Woodworking!) by Hobby Hardwood Alabama
Advance Sawmill Technique
There are some pieces of wood that won’t dry flat even if you don’t air dry them. So you have to force it. Some woods dry better than others.
Put weight on top of the wood when drying
You might be wondering why you need to add weight on top of your slabs, but you’ll notice that the first three layers of your wood are bowed if you did not put some weight on them. The layers on top of each other add weight and they constrict the boards as they dry.
In order for you to produce good pallets you need to put a lot of weight on them. I personally put at around 3,000 – 4,000 pounds per stack of wood. Boards are very elastic if not dried. So you need to add a little pressure for them to hold to your desired shape.
Some people might think or say that putting something on the wood while drying is not true at all. But because you are doing the kiln drying process, you are removing the moisture from the cell wall of the wood, you are changing its structure. By doing so, the heat, and the weight can modify the straightness and curvature of the wood.
There are boards that will flatten out but you can temporarily flatten them out so that the other boards in the stack can dry flat. You are not gonna get a 100% yield on this but you will get a much higher yield than you would just put them in the kiln.
The Forklift Advantage
It will help you to move things around easily. If you are going to do this for a living you’ve got to buy the tools that were designed to do the process that you wanted to do.