Dog ate my homework,,,,,,,,,,,,,, again
Keith Newton
I had been drying some lumber and wanted to check the MC, so cut a couple of 1/4'' thick engrain pieces to dry. A couple of months ago there was a discussion about microwaving and oven drying, which Bill T advised agains the nuking method.
The pieces were rather small, and I wanted the info rather quickly, so I zapped one. Usually if I do this, I do it in short durations rather than trying to turn all the water to steam instantly. However I didn't realize how quickly it would happen in this rather small sample. What I was surprised to find was yes the moisture came out quickly, but it took a set, and did not shrink any from the starting dimension.
The other sample I leaned against the toe-kick of my refrigerator under the freezer side where the warm air blows out. Within an hour or two, it was dry and had shrunken about 1/16" from a 5' width, which was fine for what I needed.
However I placed a few other samples from wider boards down there to test overnight, and Miss Sassy, my golden retriever companion must have thought I was warming up something for her to chew, so she destroyed them.
The point of this post really wasn't to complain about my dog, but rather to just share the simple tip. When I would imagine all of us have a fridge handy blowing out warm air off and on all day and night, so why turn on an oven.
Back when I was turning fairly large hollow vessels with a small opening, I thought it might be helpful to dry them quicker if some of the moisture was taken from the inside instead of going slowly in paper bags and or cardboard boxes. So I made a manifold which sat in front to funnel the air up through a PVC tube with gaps in the end. By setting the turning upside down on top would circulate warm dry air down from the top and out around the bottom opening. It worked great, in fact too good. I almost lost some not just deep turned, but highly carved turning due to the internal checking, so I gave up the practice. It would be fine to do if I weren't so forgetful. Back then I didn't carry a phone with timer in my pocket to remind me to stop.