green cedar for carving, need drying advice

John Fraser

John Fraser

Well-known member
Two weeks ago, across from my in-laws house, I found a pile of freshly cut white cedar logs and limbs out by the roadside with a "Free Wood" sign on it. I picked out these two logs (about 15 inch X 5 feet) and brought them home.

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Unable to buy Anchorseal locally, I coated the ends with Snowseal boot treatment. It seemed to work well as there was no checking after 2+ weeks. Today I took the logs to a man around the corner who has a Woodmizer. He cut them for me slightly larger than 2-1/4" X 8". (My typical decoy bodies are hollow, two boards plus a thin bottom board.) Luckily we hit NO nails as this was a dooryard tree. I thought these boards came out nice and I'm looking forward to carving some decoys with them someday.

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While talking about drying the boards, he asked me about percent moisture and mentioned that he has a moisture meter if I needed for him to measure it sometime. I plan on stickering these boards in the basement to dry. However I've never had boards so green and do not know how long they take to dry. How do I know when they are dry enough to carve? Should I measure the percent moisture?

Thanks!
 
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Hi John, I think the discussion here was to seal the ends very well and stick them for a year for each
inch of thickness. Looks like a lot of carving there!! John
 
the basement is not the best place to sticker wood. should be a place out of the sun, with a good access to some wind.
with a roof over it
the stickers should be at least 1" thick and leave some space between the lumber edges. if you have them in the basement already , try running a dehumidifier down there. that will help with the drying. also you can place a small fan next to the pile to get some air movement thru them.

another idea would be to tent the material with a dehumidifier inside the tent/tarp enclosure.

I have a small dehumidification kiln I made holds 500 BF and cedar of this thickness will usually dry to 9- 11% MC in 3-4 weeks
that is my normal goal for MC in cedar and it does not check after carving at or below that level.

in your basement the only way to know would be to check it with a moisture meter after a couple of months and see how it goes.
 
John,
if your basement has a furnace in it you might be fine. My basement is very dry in the winter when the rig is running to heat the house.

Look up solar kiln on google if you want to work the wood outside.
 
Thanks everyone. With winter coming I figured it be best to dry the wood in the house where it’s heated. My basement does have a fuel oil furnace and a dehumidifier. Once the furnace starts running on a regular basis the air gets quite dry down there and I end up unplugging the dehumidifier. Right now I have 3/4" stickers. I’ll try doubling them up. When I start drying fur down there this winter, I’ll have to strategically position the fan so that it blows some air on the wood as well.

I’ve already got a pile of kiln dried white pine, so I’m not in a big hurry to carve the cedar. Just want to make sure that it is dry enough before I start. I don’t want any of the finished decoys to check.

By he way, is cedar strong enough for decoy heads?
 
Using a dehumidifier constantly could dry too quickly and check the wood. If you measure across the planks now, you can compare it to later when they start to shrink. When they shrink the proper amount, you will know the moisture content is where you want it.
 
Thanks Andy. I think I've seen that when I dried wood near the furnace. It seemed to check quite a bit. My dehumidifier is in the other half of the basement than where the furnace is. This is also where I put the wood. Nice constant 50 - 55 degree temps down there in the winter. Good place to dry beaver and muskrat fur too!

I did go down there and turned the dehumidifier down a couple of notches. Like I said, I'm in no hurry.
 
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Hello John. I would bet anything that if you leave those boards in the basement to dry over the winter they will dry so fast, they crack and check like crazy. I say that from the voice of experience. Over the last 17 or 18 years that I've been carving, I've bought 4x8's and 8x8's from a lumber yard in upstate Vt that specialises in cedar. They one year I dried them in the basement with the dehumidifier running, it wasn't 2 weeks before large cracks showed up, not only in the ends, but along the sides also (and I had painted the ends with oil paint).

Eventually I wised up and stored them stickered outside, under the porch, out of the weather. I still get some cracking but not nearly as much as the year I stored them in the house. At the moment I have a 4 year old 8x8 under the porch, and 4 more 8x8's that I picked up last winter. I expect I will lose about 6" off each end when I go to chainsaw them to body length. Pretty much unavoidable...

John in Vt
 
You got lucky there man, thats $400-500 worth of cedar. Wish I could come across free cedar lol.
 
John,
I don't really have any outdoor storage that's under cover. I do have an unheated pole barn. Well I should say mostly unheated. I do run the wood stove out in the pole barn a couple of times a week throughout the winter when I'm working on fur or to thaw out the boat during the late duck season.

Do you think that this would be a better location?
 
Hi John. I would think that pole barn would give you a slower dry, which should give you less checks and cracks. The flip side of a slower dry is that maybe the wood won't be at as low a moisture content as you would prefer come spring. What I do in that case is cut one body off the log at a time for the first couple of months. Shape that body and if possible seal it with a coat of paint before you cut the next body off the log.

That may not be convienent for you, but it will cut down on the waste you experience from checking on the ends of the logs.

If you can't cut and shape each block before moving on to the next block, something else I've done is that I store multiple blocks on the cement floor of my basement, if possible with a tarp or some kind of covering over it. That keeps the block cool and the damp coming off the concrete slows the drying process down.

Good luck and please post some pics of the birds you carve.

John Bourbon
 
I just bought cedar last month..30-40% moisture. Wet...won't be dry till summer. Mine dries in the basement with a dehumidifier near the furnace. May get some minor checking, but nothing thats ever ticked me off.
 
Cedar is fine for heads, though since you have some white pine that would be better. The pine carves a lot cleaner and is easier to carve detail and less likely for your knife to follow the grain on the bill.
 
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