Seasoning of Wood Part 13

The following figures show the gain in weight by absorption of several coniferous woods, air-dry at the start, expressed in per cent of the kiln-dry weight:

ABSORPTION OF WATER BY DRY WOOD --------------------------------------------------------------- | White Pine | Red Cedar | Hemlock | Tamarack --------------------------------------------------------------- Air-dried | 108 | 109 | 111 | 108 Kiln-dried | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 In water 1 day | 135 | 120 | 133 | 129 In water 2 days | 147 | 126 | 144 | 136 In water 3 days | 154 | 132 | 149 | 142 In water 4 days | 162 | 137 | 154 | 147 In water 5 days | 165 | 140 | 158 | 150 In water 7 days | 176 | 143 | 164 | 156 In water 9 days | 179 | 147 | 168 | 157 In water 11 days | 184 | 149 | 173 | 159 In water 14 days | 187 | 150 | 176 | 159 In water 17 days | 192 | 152 | 176 | 161 In water 25 days | 198 | 155 | 180 | 161 In water 30 days | 207 | 158 | 183 | 166 ---------------------------------------------------------------

Rapidity of Evaporation

The rapidity with which water is evaporated, that is, the rate of drying, depends on the size and shape of the piece and on the structure of the wood. An inch board dries more than four times as fast as a four-inch plank, and more than twenty times as fast as a ten-inch timber. White pine dries faster than oak. A very moist piece of pine or oak will, during one hour, lose more than four times as much water per square inch from the cross-section, but only one half as much from the tangential as from the radial section. In a long timber, where the ends or cross-sections form but a small part of the drying surface, this difference is not so evident. Nevertheless, the ends dry and shrink first, and being opposed in this shrinkage by the more moist adjoining parts, they check, the cracks largely disappearing as seasoning progresses.

High temperatures are very effective in evaporating the water from wood, no matter how humid the air, and a fresh piece of sapwood may lose weight in boiling water, and can be dried to quite an extent in hot steam.

In drying chemicals or fabrics, all that is required is to provide heat enough to vaporize the moisture and circulation enough to carry off the vapor thus secured, and the quickest and most economical means to these ends may be used. While on the other hand, in drying wood, whether in the form of standard stock or the finished product, the application of the requisite heat and circulation must be carefully regulated throughout the entire process, or warping and checking are almost certain to result. Moreover, wood of different shapes and thicknesses is very differently effected by the same treatment.

Finally, the tissues composing the wood, which vary in form and physical properties, and which cross each other in regular directions, exert their own peculiar influences upon its behavior during drying.

With our native woods, for instance, summer-wood and spring-wood show distinct tendencies in drying, and the same is true in a less degree of heartwood, as contrasted with sapwood. Or, again, p.r.o.nounced medullary rays further complicate the drying problem.

Physical Properties that influence Drying

The princ.i.p.al properties which render the drying of wood peculiarly difficult are: (1) The irregular shrinkage; (2) the different ways in which water is contained; (3) the manner in which moisture transfuses through the wood from the center to the surface; (4) the plasticity of the wood substance while moist and hot; (5) the changes which take place in the hygroscopic and chemical nature of the surface; and (6) the difference produced in the total shrinkage by different rates of drying.

The shrinkage is unequal in different directions and in different portions of the same piece. It is greatest in the circ.u.mferential direction of the tree, being generally twice as great in this direction as in the radial direction. In the longitudinal direction, for most woods, it is almost negligible, being from 20 to over 100 times as great circ.u.mferentially as longitudinally.

There is a great variation in different species in this respect.

Consequently, it follows from necessity that large internal strains are set up when the wood shrinks, and were it not for its plasticity it would rupture. There is an enormous difference in the total amount of shrinkage of different species of wood, varying from a shrinkage of only 7 per cent in volume, based on the green dimensions, in the case of some of the cedars to nearly 50 per cent in the case of some species of eucalyptus.

When the free water in the capillary s.p.a.ces of the wood fibre is evaporated it follows the laws of evaporation from capillary s.p.a.ces, except that the pa.s.sages are not all free pa.s.sages, and much of the water has to pa.s.s out by a process of transfusion through the moist cell walls. These cell walls in the green wood completely surround the cell cavities so that there are no openings large enough to offer a pa.s.sage to water or air.

The well-known "pits" in the cell walls extend through the secondary thickening only, and not through the primary walls. This statement applies to the tracheids and parenchyma cells in the conifer (gymnosperms), and to the tracheids, parenchyma cells, and the wood fibres in the broad-leaved trees (angiosperms); the vessels in the latter, however, form open pa.s.sages except when clogged by ingrowth called tyloses, and the resin ca.n.a.ls in the former sometimes form occasional openings.

By heating the wood above the boiling point, corresponding to the external pressure, the free water pa.s.ses through the cell walls more readily.

To remove the moisture from the wood substance requires heat in addition to the latent heat of evaporation, because the molecules of moisture are so intimately a.s.sociated with the molecules, minute particles composing the wood, that energy is required to separate them therefrom.

Carefully conducted experiments show this to be from 16.6 to 19.6 calories per grain of dry wood in the case of beech, long-leaf pine, and sugar maple.

The difficulty imposed in drying, however, is not so much the additional heat required as it is in the rate at which the water transfuses through the solid wood.

SECTION VIII

ADVANTAGES IN SEASONING

Three most important advantages of seasoning have already been made apparent:

1. Seasoned timber lasts much longer than unseasoned. Since the decay of timber is due to the attacks of wood-destroying fungi, and since the most important condition of the growth of these fungi is water, anything which lessens the amount of water in wood aids in its preservation.

2. In the case of treated timber, seasoning before treatment greatly increases the effectiveness of the ordinary methods of treatment, and seasoning after treatment prevents the rapid leaching out of the salts introduced to preserve the timber.

3. The saving in freight where timber is shipped from one place to another. Few persons realize how much water green wood contains, or how much it will lose in a comparatively short time. Experiments along this line with lodge-pole pine, white oak, and chestnut gave results which were a surprise to the companies owning the timber.

Freight charges vary considerably in different parts of the country; but a decrease of 35 to 40 per cent in weight is important enough to deserve everywhere serious consideration from those in charge of timber operations.

When timber is shipped long distances over several roads, as is coming to be more and more the case, the saving in freight will make a material difference in the cost of lumber operations, irrespective of any other advantages of seasoning.

Prevention of Checking and Splitting

Under present methods much timber is rendered unfit for use by improper seasoning. Green timber, particularly when cut during January, February, and March, when the roots are most active, contains a large amount of water. When exposed to the sun and wind or to high temperatures in a drying room, the water will evaporate more rapidly from the outer than from the inner parts of the piece, and more rapidly from the ends than from the sides. As the water evaporates, the wood shrinks, and when the shrinkage is not fairly uniform the wood cracks and splits.

When wet wood is piled in the sun, evaporation goes on with such unevenness that the timbers split and crack in some cases so badly as to become useless for the purpose for which it was intended. Such uneven drying can be prevented by careful piling, keeping the logs immersed in a log pond until wanted, or by piling or storing under an open shed so that the sun cannot get at them.

Experiments have also demonstrated that injury to stock in the way of checking and splitting always develops immediately after the stock is taken into the dry kiln, and is due to the degree of humidity being too low.

The receiving end of the kiln should always be kept moist, where the stock has not been steamed before being put into the kiln, as when the air is too dry it tends to dry the outside of the stock first--which is termed "case-hardening"--and in so doing shrinks and closes up the pores. As the material is moved down the kiln (as in the case of "progressive kilns"), it absorbs a continually increasing amount of heat, which tends to drive off the moisture still present in the center of the piece, the pores on the outside having been closed up, there is no exit for the vapor or steam that is being rapidly formed in the center of the piece. It must find its way out in some manner, and in doing so sets up strains, which result either in checking or splitting. If the humidity had been kept higher, the outside of the piece would not have dried so quickly, and the pores would have remained open for the exit of the moisture from the interior of the piece, and this trouble would have been avoided. (See also article following.)

Shrinkage of Wood

Since in all our woods, cells with thick walls and cells with thin walls are more or less intermixed, and especially as the spring-wood and summer-wood nearly always differ from each other in this respect, strains and tendencies to warp are always active when wood dries out, because the summer-wood shrinks more than the spring-wood, and heavier wood in general shrinks more than light wood of the same kind.

If a thin piece of wood after drying is placed upon a moist surface, the cells on the under side of the piece take up moisture and swell before the upper cells receive any moisture. This causes the under side of the piece to become longer than the upper side, and as a consequence warping occurs. Soon, however, the moisture penetrates to all the cells and the piece straightens out. But while a thin board of pine curves laterally it remains quite straight lengthwise, since in this direction both shrinkage and swelling are small. If one side of a green board is exposed to the sun, warping is produced by the removal of water and consequent shrinkage of the side exposed; this may be eliminated by the frequent turning of the topmost pieces of the piles in order that they may be dried evenly.

As already stated, wood loses water faster from the ends than from the longitudinal faces. Hence the ends shrink at a different rate from the interior parts. The faster the drying at the surface, the greater is the difference in the moisture of the different parts, and hence the greater the strains and consequently also the greater amount of checking. This becomes very evident when freshly cut wood is placed in the sun, and still more when put into a hot, dry kiln. While most of these smaller checks are only temporary, closing up again, some large radial checks remain and even grow larger as drying progresses. Their cause is a different one and will presently be explained. The temporary checks not only appear at the ends, but are developed on the sides also, only to a much smaller degree. They become especially annoying on the surface of thick planks of hardwoods, and also on peeled logs when exposed to the sun.

So far we have considered the wood as if made up only of parallel fibres all placed longitudinally in the log. This, however, is not the case. A large part of the wood is formed by the medullary or pith rays. In pine over 15,000 of these occur on a square inch of a tangential section, and even in oak the very large rays, which are readily visible to the eye, represent scarcely a hundredth part of the number which a microscope reveals, as the cells of these rays have their length at right angles to the direction of the wood fibres.

If a large pith ray of white oak is whittled out and allowed to dry, it is found to shrink greatly in its width, while, as we have stated, the fibres to which the ray is firmly grown in the wood do not shrink in the same direction. Therefore, in the wood, as the cells of the pith ray dry they pull on the longitudinal fibres and try to shorten them, and, being opposed by the rigidity of the fibres, the pith ray is greatly strained. But this is not the only strain it has to bear.

Since the fibres shrink as much again as the pith ray, in this its longitudinal direction, the fibres tend to shorten the ray, and the latter in opposing this prevents the former from shrinking as much as they otherwise would.

Thus the structure is subjected to two severe strains at right angles to each other, and herein lies the greatest difficulty of wood seasoning, for whenever the wood dries rapidly these fibres have not the chance to "give" or accommodate themselves, and hence fibres and pith rays separate and checking results, which, whether visible or not, are detrimental in the use of the wood.

The contraction of the pith rays parallel to the length of the board is probably one of the causes of the small amount of longitudinal shrinkage which has been observed in boards. This smaller shrinkage of the pith rays along the radius of the log (the length of the pith ray), opposing the shrinkage of the fibres in this direction, becomes one of the causes of the second great trouble in wood seasoning, namely, the difference in the shrinkage along the radius and that along the rings or tangent. This greater tangential shrinkage appears to be due in part to the causes just mentioned, but also to the fact that the greatly shrinking bands of summer-wood are interrupted along the radius by as many bands of porous spring-wood, while they are continuous in the tangential direction. In this direction, therefore, each such band tends to shrink, as if the entire piece were composed of summer-wood, and since the summer-wood represents the greater part of the wood substance, this greater tendency to tangential shrinkage prevails.

The effect of this greater tangential shrinkage effects every phase of woodworking. It leads to permanent checks and causes the log or piece to split open on drying. Sawed in two, the flat sides of the log become convex; sawed into timber, it checks along the median line of the four faces, and if converted into boards, the latter checks considerably from the end through the center, all owing to the greater tangential shrinkage of the wood.

Briefly, then, shrinkage of wood is due to the fact that the cell walls grow thinner on drying. The thicker cell walls and therefore the heavier wood shrinks most, while the water in the cell cavities does not influence the volume of the wood.

Owing to the great difference of cells in shape, size, and thickness of walls, and still more in their arrangement, shrinkage is not uniform in any kind of wood. This irregularity produces strains, which grow with the difference between adjoining cells and are greatest at the pith rays. These strains cause warping and checking, but exist even where no outward signs are visible. They are greater if the wood is dried rapidly than if dried slowly, but can never be entirely avoided.

Temporary checks are caused by the more rapid drying of the outer parts of any stick; permanent checks are due to the greater shrinkage, tangentially, along the rings than along the radius. This, too, is the cause of most of the ordinary phenomena of shrinkage, such as the difference in behavior of the entire and quartered logs, "b.a.s.t.a.r.d"

(tangent) and rift (radial) boards, etc., and explains many of the phenomena erroneously attributed to the influence of bark, or of the greater shrinkage of outer and inner parts of any log.

Once dry, wood may be swelled again to its original size by soaking in water, boiling, or steaming. Soaked pieces on drying shrink again as before; boiled and steamed pieces do the same, but to a slightly less degree. Neither hygroscopicity, _i.e._, the capacity of taking up water, nor shrinkage of wood can be overcome by drying at temperatures below 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Higher temperatures, however, reduce these qualities, but nothing short of a coaling heat robs wood of the capacity to shrink and swell.

Rapidly dried in a kiln, the wood of oak and other hardwoods "case-harden," that is, the outer part dries and shrinks before the interior has a chance to do the same, and thus forms a firm sh.e.l.l or case of shrunken, commonly checked wood around the interior. This sh.e.l.l does not prevent the interior from drying, but when this drying occurs the interior is commonly checked along the medullary rays, commonly called "honeycombing" or "hollow-horning." In practice this occurrence can be prevented by steaming or sweating the wood in the kiln, and still better by drying the wood in the open air or in a shed before placing in the kiln. Since only the first shrinkage is apt to check the wood, any kind of lumber which has once been air-dried (three to six months for one-inch stuff) may be subjected to kiln heat without any danger from this source.

Kept in a bent or warped condition during the first shrinkage, the wood retains the shape to which it has been bent and firmly opposes any attempt at subsequent straightening.