Amish Lumber Kiln

I visited Vic in Wheeler, a chair maker/logger/dairy goat farmer and who-knows-what else. Vic had to branch out because he has so many boys. Each has to learn a trade and there wasn’t room in the cabinet shop to keep all of them working.

Unlike most woodworkers, Vic worries about relative humidity and its effect on the lumber he works with. During the humid summer months he keeps a wood stove burning in the shop to lower the relative humidity. It was uncomfortable hot in his shop. We “English” can get the same result from running a dehumidifier.

Vic’s kiln is a large closet containing a wood stove and racks of lumber, stickered between courses, plus piles of chair seats and spindles. I would guess the room was about 120 F. It’s similar to hot room drying which I describe in Drying Lumber without a Kiln (available at www.petersieling.com). You adjust the RH by raising the temperature. Lumber has to be air dried going into the room because you don’t have a steady air flow across the boards. If you did, and started with green lumber, a small amount of stress will develop which has to be relieved using higher temperature (160-180 F) at the end of drying plus the air needs to be saturated with steam.