drying holly wood

[Ramjet]

Hi .My neighbour cut down a holly tree . I was wondering if there is much time required to dry and if a special technique should be used . He is just going to burn it . Thanks . Roger

[f250]

I don't know that there is anything special about drying Holly, just set it up the same way you would with any harvested wood. I live in NM and normally dry my harvested wood for about 6 months.

Tom

[workin for wood]

I didn't know Holly grew in BC, but apparently it does. You do have great soil and climate there. I have heard things about Holly in that it is difficult wood to dry and I think there is special techniques involved. Holly is unstable. Good idea to do some research on that. I would immediately paint the ends of the logs and throw them on a shelf in the shop or garage...leave the bark on them. This will slow down and even out the drying which in log form will take years. No matter what, the ends need painted anyhow and right away. Holly is great wood and quite expensive, and you have it cut down at the perfect time too, summer. Never cut Holly in the winter! So get them logs indoors and painted, then research. You may want to invest some money into having those sliced and run through a small kiln. I would not slice them until they are ready to be kilned.

[greatdane2]

Holly is quite common here as an ornamental.I do not think it grows wild.

[Fremmed]

Really don't know anything about Holly. But when I saw the thread "Drying Holly wood" I thought you were trying to clean up the movie industry. lol

[Old Dude]

Ramjet...

Good catch. Free wood. Doesn't get any better than that. If you weren't so far away I'd take it off your hands and save you all that worry about how to deal with it.

If you want to learn everything you're likely to need to know about wood, get "Understanding Wood" by Bruce Hoadley. Written by a wood scientist for woodworkers it's an excellent resource. You won't just read it and put it aside, you'll refer to it for the rest of your woodworking life.

What size is the log?...(ie, is it millable, say 6" diameter at least). If it's small you may be able to use your bandsaw to get it into boards...rig up a resaw sled. If it's too large for that check locally for someone with a bandsaw mill. Not sure but I think Woodmizer will provide names of people in your area who own one of their saws. Bandmills are a better choice since the kerf is smaller than a circular saw so potentially more yield. In any case, get it milled as soon as possible, it will dry more evenly. Then stack it, preferably out of the weather, making sure you use stickers. The rule of thumb is 1 year for a 1" board, but check with a moisture meter...I've found that rule to not always be accurate.

Coat the ends. You will find much controversy over this, but my experience is it works more often than not, although it's not foolproof. Why do this?...think of a piece of wood as a bundle of soda straws...openings at the ends, solid along the sides. Close enough. Intuitively you can see that moisture escapes more quickly through the ends than through the sides, although with a piece of wood as opposed to a soda straw it actually does escape through the sides as well. The idea with end-coating is to slow moisture escape through that exit so it more closely matches moisture escape through the sides. So plug those end openings. I've had better results with the stuff that Woodcraft sells than with anything else. Why care about this? Green wood contains moisture in two states: free and bound. My favorite analogy is a kitchen sponge. Dip it in water so it's sopping. It now contains bound water and free water.The bound water is in the walls of the cells, the free water is within the cell cavities. Wring it out as strenuously as you can...it's still moist. You have gotten rid of the free water and are left with the bound water. With wood this is called the Fibre Saturation Point. Regardless of species, this occurs at about 32% moisture content. Free water escapes first...intuitively makes sense. As long as the cells are at or above FSP no dimensional changes occur. Wood only starts to shrink when it begins to lose bound water. Now if the free water is allowed to escape through the ends faster than free water elsewhere is migrating out, the ends reach FSP first. Then the ends begin to shrink, but the rest of the log (boards) don't, and this leads to checking.

Some wood behaves very badly during drying, whether air-dried or kiln-dried. This isn't species-dependent, but rather depends on the particular sample and the internal stresses that have developed during growth. These are usually exacerbated during drying. I saved a red oak board one time that looked like a bread twist after it was dried, others from the same batch were fine. Not much you can do about this except hope for the best.

Good luck with the Holly. Would like to know how you make out.

Cheers.

[Ramjet]

Hi Old Dude . Thanks for the info . Unfortunately it wasn't that big of a tree . The largest pieces were only 3" - 4" wide . By the time I asked him he had already bucked and cut it . I picked up about 1/2 dozen and painted the ends . I can rip them on my table saw at a later date .I thought it may look good as inserts Right now scrolling is on hold as we have our house up for sale . Decided to hire a stager . Sure realize in a hurry how much stuff one has accumulated over 35 years . Most all junk now . One man's junk another man's treasure .
Thanks .Roger

[Janette]

We got our neighbors holly tree too. After seeing the ends cracking - we got ahold of an old candle and melted the wax to the ends. Left it a couple of years in the garage and now it's ready to slice up.

[Toolman56]

Hi, i know what ya mean about junk, aft my dev, she pack her bags en left, leaving me with all the house stuff, i turn around and say what am i gonna do with all this, then you relize this is 12 years of building your lifes to together, then by fate or something George Straight song just came on, i thought that was weird, becuse he was singing just give a away, and i told George good idea, and put a sign in front yard all free inside the house,i think i had half of Des Moines inside the house, all i keep was a few photo albums en pots en stuff and enuff to fill a storage unit so when i get my apt i be set , all my tools are in storage too, very hard to find a house with a garage , and i wanna start scrolling again , i miss it so much , it was like therpy to me.

[greatdane2]

Thanks for the lesson " old Dude" your explanation was very well written and easy to follow. When it gets technical I just get lost. Wish more people could descibe things the way you do. It seems to be a rare talent.
Alan & Chance.