Drying freshly cut wood.

[ssorllih]

Towards the end of June this year the Bradford pear trees were being heavily pruned and I hobo'd some od the larger limbs for use in smoking. I selected two and weighed them and cut one into 2 inch long chunks and left the other about 18 inches long. The green chunks weighed1.52 pounds on June 29 and the stick was2.6 pounds on the same day. Mid August I weighed again and the chunks were .97 and the stick 1.8. Today They weighed .97 and 1.7. So my observation is that green wood will loose most of its moisture in 2 months or less.

 

[themule69]

It doesn't take long on small pieces. I have never weighed any however. Nice research.

Happy smoken.

David

 

[smokewood]

It doesn't take long for chunks or thin logs to dry out, as soon as you cut the branch off the tree the moisture content of your chunks will be around 50%, in other words your wood will be 50% water.  You can lose a lot of that moisture quite quickly, depending how warm it is taking the moisture content of your wood down to about 16 -20%. .  

You can pick up moisture meters quite cheaply these days, the ones builders use for checking houses etc, and that will give you the moisture readings of your wood.  The doors in my house are 140 years old and the moisture content is 8%, so wood never completely dries out.