14 ms·

For the right money, you can find the right ladder. It's not going to be cheap though, because you have to age the wood. I wonder if there is a way to age the

For the right money, you can find the right ladder. It's not going to be cheap though, because you have to age the wood. I wonder if there is a way to age the wood to SF humidity/climate faster than real time. Just feels like there has to be.

garmaine 8y ago
Pressure? But it’s going to be mighty expensive to build a pressure chamber that big.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  What pressure do they need, a length of pipe might do?
- jaggederest 8y ago
  Negative pressure might be more useful. Boil out the water under half an atmosphere, and replace the atmosphere with dried nitrogen and a chunk of desiccant. You'll probably damage the wood if you do that though. Now I want to try it in my vacuum chamber, but I'm not sure it'll hold vacuum for weeks/months at a time.
  - namibj 8y ago
    Just use a pipe with conductive plating on the inside and operate it in the 3-digit MHz range as a waveguide. Make sure that the core of the wood has more power than the outside, and that you e.g. move it around lengthwise if you get longitudal resonance in the pipe. Add some desiccant, and make sure the way you couple the energy into the chamber can handle this resonance without frying itself through reflection. Might not need the vacuum, but it should be easy to construct it in a way that it can hold a vacuum of around 10~200 mBar, e.g. with a simple one-stage pump. If you make sure the pump doesn't take in much moisture, there shouldn't be an issue for it.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
You can use a kiln, which is how most timber is dried these days. If you're feeling bored, the Wikipedia article on wood drying is very comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying
- exDM69 8y ago
  Kiln drying doesn't produce ready to use lumber for fine woodworking or demanding applications. It's fine for construction material but needs additional seasoning and acclimatization in the environment it's going to be used in if it's to be used for anything else. Fast drying will also introduce stress and warping to the wood. It would not work when long straight and thick material is needed.
gascan 8y ago
Hell, for the right money your in house staff might make the right ladder for you! ... wait.
wahern 8y ago
You can dry wood faster. Lots of woodworkers build little makeshift kilns by stickering the wood inside an enclosure with a fan and, optionally, using the sun or an electric heater. Temperature control, sticker spacing, and proper stacking is key so it takes lots of experience if you don't want to lose too much wood to warping, checking, etc. And 13% moisture is relatively high. Kiln-dried hardwood for furniture is sold at about 8-10% moisture. Dried construction lumber is usually sold at about 19% moisture--just below the point which inhibits mold growth.[1] Heck, some of the construction-grade lumber at a big box store might already be at 13% just from sitting around for months inside the store. (Though they stack them poorly and this is one reason why the pieces are often so warped.) I assume that they keep the pieces around for so long simply because they can. If your time horizon is decades, then you lose nothing by simply stacking the wood (without much stickering) and letting it sit. That doesn't take much effort, just patience. And considering how expensive and rare such long, defect-free pieces are, why risk losing pieces? I have no doubt they could dry the pieces faster, but they have better ways to spend their time. Their only immediate responsibility is to keep the years-long pipeline of wood filled. [1] On the East Coast with a more humid climate, homebuilders purchase pre-dried lumber for framing. On the West Coast with a much dryer climate, builders traditionally buy wet wood for framing and the wood usually dries to <= 19% by the time they begin finishing the interior. (Wood primarily shrinks tangentially and radially, not longitudinally, so drying framing in place isn't usually an issue. See http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrinkage/ http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrin...)
- namibj 8y ago
  You can also stick them in a room-sized microwave oven operated at rather low frequencies, to get deeper penetration into the wood and dry it from within. If you do that with whole logs, you should be able to cut them to be straight in the dry state. This takes in the order of days, not years, without damaging the structural integrity by chemical decomposition that starts at relatively low temperatures. If you are in a hurry, you can also put something like burnt lime in the chamber as that chemically captures the evaporating water without releasing it in these conditions. That way you can keep the humidity under 5% during the process if you spread the lime enough to capture the water as fast as it is driven out of the wood. You need to be careful to not burn the wood, but you should be able to use something from FLIR with some computer vision to check that no lumber overheats. The water also increases the absorption a lot, so this provides feedback that equalizes the humidity, instead of e.g. a runaway heating that would happen if dryer wood absorbs more microwaves.

garmaine 8y ago

Pressure? But it’s going to be mighty expensive to build a pressure chamber that big.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
What pressure do they need, a length of pipe might do?
jaggederest 8y ago
Negative pressure might be more useful. Boil out the water under half an atmosphere, and replace the atmosphere with dried nitrogen and a chunk of desiccant. You'll probably damage the wood if you do that though. Now I want to try it in my vacuum chamber, but I'm not sure it'll hold vacuum for weeks/months at a time.
- namibj 8y ago
  Just use a pipe with conductive plating on the inside and operate it in the 3-digit MHz range as a waveguide. Make sure that the core of the wood has more power than the outside, and that you e.g. move it around lengthwise if you get longitudal resonance in the pipe. Add some desiccant, and make sure the way you couple the energy into the chamber can handle this resonance without frying itself through reflection. Might not need the vacuum, but it should be easy to construct it in a way that it can hold a vacuum of around 10~200 mBar, e.g. with a simple one-stage pump. If you make sure the pump doesn't take in much moisture, there shouldn't be an issue for it.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

You can use a kiln, which is how most timber is dried these days. If you're feeling bored, the Wikipedia article on wood drying is very comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying

exDM69 8y ago
Kiln drying doesn't produce ready to use lumber for fine woodworking or demanding applications. It's fine for construction material but needs additional seasoning and acclimatization in the environment it's going to be used in if it's to be used for anything else. Fast drying will also introduce stress and warping to the wood. It would not work when long straight and thick material is needed.

gascan 8y ago

Hell, for the right money your in house staff might make the right ladder for you! ... wait.

wahern 8y ago

You can dry wood faster. Lots of woodworkers build little makeshift kilns by stickering the wood inside an enclosure with a fan and, optionally, using the sun or an electric heater. Temperature control, sticker spacing, and proper stacking is key so it takes lots of experience if you don't want to lose too much wood to warping, checking, etc. And 13% moisture is relatively high. Kiln-dried hardwood for furniture is sold at about 8-10% moisture. Dried construction lumber is usually sold at about 19% moisture--just below the point which inhibits mold growth.[1] Heck, some of the construction-grade lumber at a big box store might already be at 13% just from sitting around for months inside the store. (Though they stack them poorly and this is one reason why the pieces are often so warped.) I assume that they keep the pieces around for so long simply because they can. If your time horizon is decades, then you lose nothing by simply stacking the wood (without much stickering) and letting it sit. That doesn't take much effort, just patience. And considering how expensive and rare such long, defect-free pieces are, why risk losing pieces? I have no doubt they could dry the pieces faster, but they have better ways to spend their time. Their only immediate responsibility is to keep the years-long pipeline of wood filled. [1] On the East Coast with a more humid climate, homebuilders purchase pre-dried lumber for framing. On the West Coast with a much dryer climate, builders traditionally buy wet wood for framing and the wood usually dries to <= 19% by the time they begin finishing the interior. (Wood primarily shrinks tangentially and radially, not longitudinally, so drying framing in place isn't usually an issue. See http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrinkage/ http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrin...)

namibj 8y ago
You can also stick them in a room-sized microwave oven operated at rather low frequencies, to get deeper penetration into the wood and dry it from within. If you do that with whole logs, you should be able to cut them to be straight in the dry state. This takes in the order of days, not years, without damaging the structural integrity by chemical decomposition that starts at relatively low temperatures. If you are in a hurry, you can also put something like burnt lime in the chamber as that chemically captures the evaporating water without releasing it in these conditions. That way you can keep the humidity under 5% during the process if you spread the lime enough to capture the water as fast as it is driven out of the wood. You need to be careful to not burn the wood, but you should be able to use something from FLIR with some computer vision to check that no lumber overheats. The water also increases the absorption a lot, so this provides feedback that equalizes the humidity, instead of e.g. a runaway heating that would happen if dryer wood absorbs more microwaves.