How to dry pieces of mulberry wood

shota70

shota70

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Hello dear friends
About a week ago a friend of mine sawed the branches of the mulberry tree in his house. To my delight he remembered that I was interested in this wood as a raw material for shipbuilding and carving (following comments from members of this forum). Today I received the pieces that are diameter in different ranges from 3-11 cm and in lengths between 30-65 cm. I ask for guidance on the drying process and steps, including recommended durations for each step, to make the pieces a useful raw material. The pieces are kept in a dry and shady place / indoor room where the temperature ranges between 28-22 degrees. Thanks
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Paint the ends with something. Old house paint, shellac, anything like that. I always split or saw the pieces lengthwise to give the drying sresses somewhere to go. If you do that you should also paint the fresh wood. I've never dried Mulberry so I'm not sure how fussy it is. But at the very least paint the ends.
 
hello Daniel,
I have seen hobbyists put small timber billets inside an oven on very low heat with the door slightly open. You need a moisture meter to monitor things.
 
Hi Shota,

I don t know Mulberry have never worked with it.
First it is important to lumber in the winter time, durung this period a tree is at rest and is far less humid.
Normally when a round tree trunk is drying the wood shrinks, the more moisture it contains the more it will shrink when drying.
To avoid that the wood will crack during the shrinking process you need to reduce the speed of drying or to release the stress during drying.

Reducing the speed of drying can be done by sealing the ends of the trunk, often this is done with molten parafin like from a candle. Drying this slowly give you the risk of creating fungus in the wood especially when the wood is cut in spring or summer when containing a lot of moisture.

Reducing stress can be done by quarterly sawing the wood. This means sawing each log in 4 pieces through the core. Now the wood can dry and shrink without major cracking. To do this you need bigger logs to keep some usefull wood remaining. I have done this with my 20 cm diameter pear logs and now after 1,5 year drying on a pallet in my garage they are just fine.

Last is to keep an eye on bugs, if you have any pieces with bore holes of bugs keep them away and discard them.

See below the topic I created about making your own lumber.

Timber from logs

For my future project I am collecting timber. Recently I was already able to buy some pear, boxwood and also old ebony piano keys, all via internet. Last weekend I got in contact with somebody who harvested a part of his pear orchard where he removed 200 trees and he sold the logs of 220 cm x 15...
shipsofscale.com

If your current mulberry adventure is not succesfull you will certainly learn from it.

I am sourcing now my own pearwood, apple wood, maple and boxwood.

If you don t want to have all this work you can also try a local parquettery store or furnature maker, they will always have usefull leftover which are still suitable for our hobby.

For me it is extra fun that I will build my next ship with my own sourced pearwood.

Hopefully it helps
 
Maarten said:
Hi Shota,

I don t know Mulberry have never worked with it.
First it is important to lumber in the winter time, durung this period a tree is at rest and is far less humid.
Normally when a round tree trunk is drying the wood shrinks, the more moisture it contains the more it will shrink when drying.
To avoid that the wood will crack during the shrinking process you need to reduce the speed of drying or to release the stress during drying.

Reducing the speed of drying can be done by sealing the ends of the trunk, often this is done with molten parafin like from a candle. Drying this slowly give you the risk of creating fungus in the wood especially when the wood is cut in spring or summer when containing a lot of moisture.

Reducing stress can be done by quarterly sawing the wood. This means sawing each log in 4 pieces through the core. Now the wood can dry and shrink without major cracking. To do this you need bigger logs to keep some usefull wood remaining. I have done this with my 20 cm diameter pear logs and now after 1,5 year drying on a pallet in my garage they are just fine.

Last is to keep an eye on bugs, if you have any pieces with bore holes of bugs keep them away and discard them.

See below the topic I created about making your own lumber.

Timber from logs

For my future project I am collecting timber. Recently I was already able to buy some pear, boxwood and also old ebony piano keys, all via internet. Last weekend I got in contact with somebody who harvested a part of his pear orchard where he removed 200 trees and he sold the logs of 220 cm x 15...
shipsofscale.com

If your current mulberry adventure is not succesfull you will certainly learn from it.

I am sourcing now my own pearwood, apple wood, maple and boxwood.

If you don t want to have all this work you can also try a local parquettery store or furnature maker, they will always have usefull leftover which are still suitable for our hobby.

For me it is extra fun that I will build my next ship with my own sourced pearwood.

Hopefully it helps
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for your detailed answer, it was most helpful dear friend
 
i would cut the logs length wise down the center then with the flat side down take a thin cut off the edges turn it and take a slice off the top like this

leave these billets sit for a few months so they stabilize and dry out a bit. I cut down logs in stages as they dry. So after a few months i will cut down the billets into boards in this case with small logs i will split the billet in 3rds

do not expose them to heat like storing them in a hot attic they need air flow to dry. Mulberry is a hard dense wood and it will crack if dried to quickly. Some people coat the ends i leave them as is.


mul.jpg
 
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I did a lot of drying wood for bows and one thing to remember here is that each wood is different. Some woods you can throw out in the hot sun and they will dry just fine. Others you have to baby along for years(depending on size). The denser the wood the harder it is to dry, usually. Like has been said sawing or splitting helps a lot but it also means you have smaller pieces and you lose more to warping.
 
i tested drying methods to see what happens using hard woods like Hawthorn, apple, ironwood when i cut the logs in thin sheets 1/4in / 10mm
and set them out to dry they warped and twisted to the point of being useless. Next i cut the logs into billets and let those dry out a bit. They still warped but far less than the thin sheets. Once they are done with the warp then i trim the billets to minimize the warp, let them set a few weeks and if they did not warp i will cut them down closer to the final size.
 
Bryian said:
Commercial timber suppliers to the building industry sell kiln dried timber. I assume the wood is baked in an oven to remove moisture.
Click to expand...

well sort of

lumber is not put in a hot box and baked at a hot temperature until it is dry

bascily how a kiln works is wood is placed in the kiln chamber and large fans blow air over the surface of the wood the air is not really hot it is around 80F 26C the air flows over a cooling coils where the moisture condenses and the warm air is recirculated over the wood. As more and more moisture is removed in cycles the air warms up.

What dries the wood is circulation of air and controled humidity which i do not think you can do in your kitched oven or microwave oven.
 
i have built my own solar-powered wood drying kiln. I salvaged sliding glass doors then built a box out of plywood 4 x 4 x 8 feet with a glass top. Pile the wood inside using sticks to seperate the boards. Next is to use a fan at one end of the box and blow air into one end of the box and out the other. You got to watch the process carefully if you start seeing surface cracks your to hot in the box and not enough humidity, place a bucket of water in with the wood to keep humidity around 70 to 80% in the beginning.
an interesting fact i found in an old wood working book

when boxwood logs were harvested a pit was dug in the ground and patted with straw, the logs were piled in the pit adding straw and logs. This was done to slow down the drying and preventing the logs from shattering. Once the major part of the moisture in the logs was gone the logs were put in the open air with a sheet of tin covering the logs.

a mistake i once made

i harvested Applewood logs from an old orchard being cleared for development. I took the logs to a saw mill and had them cut into slabs. I had nowhere to store 1,200 board feet of lumber. My uncle at the time was too old to drive and sold his car, so he had this nice empty garage he said i can use. Not knowing any better i thought, it got hot in the garage so that would dry the lumber. I stacked all the wood in the garage closed it up for the summer. When i went to get the wood to my surprise when i opend the door it smelled like warm apple cider i thought nice smell. The wood rotted over the summer because there was no air circulation so that hot humid air just stayed in the garage and rotted 800 board feet of prime Applewood.
 
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