Drying wood in salt. Harvesting and drying of wood: "old-fashioned method". Harvesting and drying wood

When buying wood, we are usually interested in its moisture content. Nobody wants to buy raw lumber, because its use as a building or ornamental material is justified only in rare cases (for example, for pouring concrete).

Therefore, logging and processing companies usually trade in wood that has already gone through the drying process.

What is wood moisture content

In production construction works and for making wooden products wood with a moisture content of not more than 23% is usually used.

In practice, there are several types of wood depending on its moisture content:

wet - humidity more than 23%;
atmospheric dry - humidity 18 - 23%;
air-dry (after artificial drying) - humidity 12 - 18%;
room-dry - humidity 8 - 12%.

The lower, the less it is subject to the process of decay. In addition, after drying, almost all the properties of wood that are important for use are improved:

its strength increases;
deformability is reduced;
, grinding, gluing, staining;
indicators such as electrical conductivity, heat capacity decrease, the calorific value increases;
The density of wood is directly related to its moisture content, the drier the wood, the lighter it is.

There is also the concept of equilibrium moisture content of wood. This means that at certain values humidity and its temperature, the moisture content of wood remains unchanged and tends to a certain value.

If these parameters change, the wood will either release moisture into the surrounding atmosphere or absorb it until the humidity reaches a new defined value.

Thus, in the process of drying wood, its moisture content is deliberately reduced to equilibrium values, depending on where and how the lumber will be used.

Wood drying methods

All methods of excess moisture can be divided into the following types:

natural drying;

The first way is known to all. It consists in the fact that the lumber is stacked, where the rows are laid with spacers, a coating is made on top to protect against atmospheric precipitation and left to lie in the air. Due to the constant ventilation of the stack, the wood loses moisture and dries out.

The second way is to dry the wood in special drying chambers. where you can control the temperature and humidity. But this option is suitable for drying and is used mainly in woodworking enterprises.

What methods of drying wood can be used at home?

Even the ancient masters were able to perfectly dry the wood to the desired condition. Many methods were used for this, some of which are still relevant today.

Such an unpleasant property of wood as cracking during drying is known. However, not all wood species are equally prone to cracking:

alder, linden, birch, poplar and aspen - dry almost without cracks;
larch, spruce, cedar, fir, pine - crack, but not too much;
beech, hornbeam, maple, ash, oak - subject to severe cracking.

This circumstance to drying of each type of wood.

One of the well-known folk methods of drying is drying the tree right on the vine. It is carried out as follows:

At a distance of about half a meter from the ground, the bark is removed in a ring along the entire circumference of the chosen trunk. The width of the ring is approximately 1 - 1.5 m. Reducing the width of the ring leads to a longer drying time.
The removed bark ensures that moisture does not enter the crown of the tree, while the foliage quickly consumes the remaining moisture in the trunk, thereby dehydrating it.
The readiness of wood is determined by the degree of drying of the foliage.
When it is completely dry, the trunk can be cut down and used.

Drying the sawn trunk:

The tree is cut down and, leaving a ring of bark on the trunk 0.7 - 1 m wide from the saw cut, the rest of the trunk is left without bark. The crown is not touched.
The foliage left on the trunk quickly draws moisture out of it, effectively drying the wood.
After 2 - 3 weeks, the trunk can be sawn and folded under a canopy for final drying.

Drying is carried out in the same way as in enterprises: a flooring is built on a flat dry site, on which lumber is stacked in a pile. The top row is laid with a slope and covered from precipitation.

To protect the ends of the material from decay, they are covered with lime, treated with a solution of sodium chloride or coated with liquid glue.

This method allows you to get rid of 75% of the moisture in the wood, but it is very slow:

coniferous and soft hardwoods dry out within 1 - 1.5 years;
hard rocks - more than 2 years.

Drying wood in a closed ventilated area. To do this, you can use a spacious barn or enough high loft. Here the stack of wood is stacked on spacers than on the street. It is only necessary to ensure constant ventilation of the room.

Drying lumber cement floor. This method is sometimes used to dry small volumes of lumber. It is laid out in one row on the cement floor and the boards are turned over from time to time. The method is based on the ability of cement to draw moisture from other materials upon contact.

Drying small wooden blanks and parts with newspapers:

the workpiece is tightly wrapped in a dry newspaper and placed in a plastic bag, which is tightly wrapped.
The bag with the workpiece is placed in a warm place.
When the newspaper becomes damp, it is changed to dry and the process is repeated until the billet reaches the required moisture content.

This process usually takes about 3-4 weeks. As the wood dries, newspapers need to be changed less and less. To speed up the process, the workpiece can be wrapped in a thicker layer of paper, but here it is too quick drying may result in cracks.

Drying blanks with sawdust or straw: blanks are covered with a thick layer of sawdust or dry straw and placed under a canopy. Sawdust and straw take moisture from the wood, but you don’t need to change them, they quickly dry out on their own.

Drying by methods of steaming and digestion of wood.

These are more complex methods, but they can be successfully applied at home.
The steaming method is used to replace the moisture contained inside the wood with vegetable oil. To do this, the workpiece is placed in a container with any vegetable oil and heated over low heat for 6-7 hours.

Steaming time depends on the size and thickness of the workpiece. In former times, wood intended for the manufacture of wooden utensils. And the dishes turned out very durable, without cracks.

The method of boiling consists in keeping the workpiece in a boiling saline solution for a long time (2 tablespoons of salt per 1 liter of water). Salt drives the cell sap out of the wood, replacing it. The saline solution itself is expelled from the wood much faster than water and without "severe consequences".

After boiling for 8 - 10 hours, the workpiece is removed, tied with rags for 2 weeks, put in a dry place. When using digestion, you can simultaneously change the color of the wood. To do this, coniferous sawdust is stirred into the saline solution. If the workpiece is large, then after drying in air, the digestion is repeated, then the workpiece is dried again. All this time, the strapping is not removed from it.

If the products were made from damp wood, they can be dried using dry, clean river sand for this. To do this, the workpiece is placed in a container of suitable size, sprinkled with sand on all sides and placed in the oven.

We have reviewed the most drying wood at home. All of them require time and patience. So if you urgently need a dry blank or several boards, then it would be more appropriate to purchase blanks of the desired moisture content.

If you are a home craftsman and you have nowhere to hurry, folk methods drying will be just right. After all, they almost 100% guarantee the correct drying of wood, in which the risk cracking minimal.

It is estimated that a living tree, together with its trunk, branches, roots, bark and leaves, is 65-85% water. The moisture supplied by the roots from the soil maintains the viability of the plant cells. But moisture in nature is needed not only for a living tree, but also for a dead one. Thanks to the water it contains, it quickly breaks down, turning into a natural fertilizer needed by living plants. If this did not happen, then many forests of the globe would be buried under the trunks and branches of dead trees.

But then the wood falls into the hands of a woodworker, and the moisture contained in it, instead of a positive one, begins to play a negative role. The surface of raw wood after turning, sawing and cutting becomes fleecy and difficult to finish. It is very difficult to sand, varnish and paint coatings crack and crumble. After drying, the product warps and becomes covered with deep cracks. They occur in wood due to the uneven drying of its various layers - the upper ones dry out and decrease in volume much faster than the inner ones.

The wood cracks along the core rays. At the end of a cracked log or ridge, it is clearly seen that basically all the cracks go in the radial direction and only some minor cracks can be located at the boundary of the annual layers. The more the wood dries out, the more numerous and deeper the cracks that appear in it. Soft and light wood usually dries out less than hard, dense and heavy wood. In addition, soft wood dries much faster than hard wood, warps and cracks less. According to the degree of shrinkage, the wood of various trees can be divided into three groups: low drying - spruce, juniper, willow, cedar, poplar; medium non-drying - elm, pear, oak, linden, alder, aspen, mountain ash and ash; strongly drying - birch, larch, apple tree, lilac and maple.

Even in ancient times, people noticed that wood only after removing moisture from easily collapsing raw materials turns into a strong and durable material. From it they built dwellings, made tools and various household utensils. But how to dry wood so that cracks do not form in it?

For many centuries, folk craftsmen have developed their methods of drying wood, sometimes striking with surprise and wit. The trees were dried right in the forest or in the yard under a canopy, in a heated room, in a Russian stove, in the ground, shavings, in grain, boiled, soaked in water ... Using this or that method of drying, the craftsmen necessarily took into account the type of tree, its structure , hardness, density and dimensions of workpieces. picking up suitable material for blanks, they knew that curly wood with twisted wood layers was less prone to cracking than straight grain. They knew that the part of the tree trunk, located closer to the root, the so-called butt, has a stronger wood that is less susceptible to cracking than the rest of the trunk. Wood raw materials were also dried taking into account the conditions in which the finished product will be. For example, for carpentry, wood was dried more thoroughly than for construction.

The moisture in the wood of a freshly cut tree is divided into capillary, or free, and colloidally bound, or hygroscopic. Hygroscopic moisture directly enters the wood cells. Capillary moisture, called "forest moisture" by folk craftsmen, fills the intercellular space and channels of wood. During the drying process, capillary moisture is first removed, and then hygro-130 moisture. In practice, absolutely dry wood is not found.

All wood contains a certain percentage of moisture. Therefore, in the woodworking industry, in the practical determination of the degree of wood moisture, it is customary to indicate the percentage of water in relation to 100 g of conditionally absolutely dry wood. The wood of a freshly cut tree is called raw wood. It usually has a very high degree of humidity. For example, in spruce and pine, it can reach up to 150%. Humidity of about 200% has wood that has lain in water. They call it wet. Wood containing 18-23% moisture is called semi-dry. This means that for 100 g of absolutely dry wood there are 18-23 g of water. And wood that weighed 100 g in an absolutely dry state will already weigh 118-123 g at the indicated humidity. Air-dry wood has a moisture content of 12-18%, and room-dry wood - 8-12%. Typically, for art and carpentry, wood is used that has a moisture content of 8-12%, and for carpentry - 12-18%. For example, a chair or table should be made from room-dry wood, and carved architraves from air dry.

How is wood dried, how is it turned from raw material into a wonderful solar material?

Folk craftsmen harvested wood in specially designated forest areas; cutting down a tree in the forest without permission was considered a great sin and even a crime. Zago-

started trading late autumn, as soon as the last leaf falls from the trees, and finished with the beginning of spring sap flow. At this time, there is very little "forest moisture" in the trunks of numb trees. Therefore, they dry faster, crack less. Nature itself dried the wood, and man only dried it out in one of the known ways.

Drying of wood in the forest right on the vine was carried out in spring and summer. A wide ring of bark was removed around the tree trunk intended for felling. Moisture from the soil ceased to flow into the crown. Leaves and needles absorbed the moisture remaining in the trunk, which evaporated simultaneously with drying. A tree with a dried trunk was felled, branches were chopped off, and then they were buckled, that is, they were sawn into logs. Nowadays, harvesters dry pine in this way before rafting down the river. Drying trees on the vine increases the buoyancy of the rafted wood, and hence reduces its loss along the way.

In the spring, when young foliage was gaining full strength on the trees, Bogorodsk craftsmen went to the forest to harvest linden wood for carved toys. At the fallen linden, branches were cut off and the bark was removed from the trunk for about two-thirds of the length of the entire tree. The upper part of the tree with branches, branches and leaves (crown) was left untouched. The considerations were very simple. In a sawn tree, the foliage does not fade immediately, but continues to fight for life for a long time, as if powerful pumps 131 drawing in the life-giving moisture that is in the tree trunk. For two weeks, this natural pump pumped out so much moisture from the trunk that it took about outdoors it would take several months. After two weeks, the linden trunk was sawn into ridges up to one and a half meters long. Barked and dried linden ridges, the so-called lutoshki, were brought home and dried in the yard under a canopy, laying them on a flooring rising above the ground. By autumn, lime wood was already quite suitable for all kinds of carvings. Part of the wood was put into action, and the rest continued to be dried in free air.

Atmospheric drying, or free air drying, is simple and affordable, but a tree located under a canopy that protects it from rain and direct sun rays, dries very slowly - from several months to several years. Wood dries better in summer than in spring, autumn and winter. But if the summer is rainy, it not only dries poorly, but can become moldy and even rot. In favorable weather, the wood can be dried to an air-dry state (12-18% moisture content).

Trunks of soft trees hardwood debark, that is, remove the bark from them, and stack them on racks. Sometimes strips of bark are left on the side of the ends. The same rings at regular intervals are left in the middle. From the trunks of hardwood trees, such as apple, maple, the bark is not removed at all. To prevent the wood from cracking due to uneven drying, the ends of the trunks are painted over or whitened. Putties that close the pores of wood are made up of a mixture of drying oil and fluff lime or tree resin and chalk. When drying small trunks, the ends are covered with a thick layer of thick oil paint.

Chamber drying is widely used in woodworking enterprises. In special drying chambers, wood is treated with superheated steam and flue gas. The wood dried in the chambers has a room-dry moisture content (8-12%) and is used for carpentry, turning and carving. From three days to a week is required to dry soft wood, such as pine, linden or spruce. From two weeks to a month, hardwood of oak, beech or elm should dry in the chamber. But even during chamber drying, the appearance of cracks is not excluded. Therefore, scientists are constantly looking for better and quick ways wood drying.

IN last years were created drying chambers operating at high frequency currents. In such chambers, wood is placed between two brass electrode grids. Current is supplied to the electrodes from a high-frequency generator. IN electric field wood dries almost 20 times faster than in a steam chamber. In this way, valuable hardwood is dried.

Drying wood by steaming has been used by folk craftsmen since the distant past, since it was invented Russian oven, which became the prototype of the modern drying chamber.

If for some reason it was not possible to harvest wood from the spring, it was dried in a short time in Russian ovens. The wood was steamed in large cast irons. Raw wood was placed in cast iron, and a little water was poured into the bottom. Then the cast iron was covered with a lid and placed in a heated furnace. To prevent the heat from leaving the furnace, it was closed with a damper. In the morning, the wood was taken out of the cast iron and dried at room temperature.

Another, simpler method of drying wood was also used. After the next firebox, the ashes were raked out of the Russian stove and the underside was cleanly swept, on which wooden blanks were placed on the buttocks. Having tightly closed the damper, the tree was kept in the oven until the morning. By morning, the wood dried well and at the same time acquired a beautiful color. Raw white linden, after steaming, turned golden, and alder wood turned light chocolate.

Digestion in fresh water you can remove the "forest moisture" from the softwood of linden, pine, alder and other trees. Simultaneously with the release from capillary moisture wood-

on becomes much softer than in the dried state. With this in mind, woodworkers carved spoons and ladles from steamed wood immediately after removing it from hot water. M. Gorky compares steamed wood with oil in “A Tale of the Unusual”: “... an old man is sitting on a stump by the fire, a cauldron is boiling over the bonfire in stones, - logs are soft in the cauldron ... The handmade old man is bent over, cutting spoons ... He acts quickly with a knife, the shavings splash on his knees, on his legs. The logs are raw, cut easily, like butter, there is no squeak from the knife. And the water gurgles in the boiler.

Spoons and various thin-walled dishes carved from boiled wood dry out so quickly that cracks do not have time to appear.

Boiling the wood in salt water also prevents it from cracking. In addition, salt reliably protects wood from the penetration of putrefactive microbes into it. In the woodworking workshops of timber industry enterprises that produce troughs and other dugout utensils, finished goods from linden, aspen and willow are boiled in a 25% solution of table salt.

Small blanks of hard and soft wood can be processed at home. Raw wood is placed in a deep saucepan and filled to the top with salt water at the rate of 4-5 tablespoons of table salt per liter of water. The wood is simmered for two to three hours, then removed from salt water and dried at room temperature. 133

Soaking wood in water reduces the appearance of cracks during subsequent drying. In the water, which protects the wood of a freshly cut tree from rotting, logs were stored during the season. Often, oak logs were immersed at the bottom of a stream or river (it is necessary that the water was running). To prevent them from floating, a load was tied to them. Apparently, soaking wood before drying advised woodworkers black bog oak, which they sometimes raised from the bottom of forest rivers and streams. The bog oak, which had lain in water for tens or even hundreds of years, was as hard as a stone, and when it dried, it did not become covered with cracks.

Boiling small pieces of hardwood in oil and drying oil not only prevents the appearance of cracks, but also enhances the decorative expressiveness of the material. Blanks for small carved items from apple, boxwood, pear and oak are boiled in natural drying oil, linen, cottonseed, tree (olive) oil. During cooking, the oil displaces moisture from the wood into the air, filling the intercellular spaces. The wood boiled in oil or drying oil is then dried at room temperature. Well-dried wood acquires additional strength and moisture resistance, it is perfectly sanded and polished.

Drying logs in a vertical position on dry land is known in the southern regions of our country. For example, Uzbek carvers dried wood under a canopy in the open air.

Logs intended for drying were placed vertically so that the lower end rested on dry soil. The moisture in the logs gradually descended along the fibers through the capillaries down and the dry earth greedily absorbed it.

Elder Master musical instruments Rakhimdzhan Kasymov said that in the recent past, masters practiced drying wood in the ground and river sand. From the trunk of a freshly cut tree, a rough billet was first hewn out. Then it was buried in the ground somewhere under a canopy, so that even a rare Central Asia rain could not moisten the soil. In the ground, the tree was kept for several years, but often only one year was enough. After a certain period, the workpiece was pulled out of the ground and dried indoors. The drying time was determined by the state of the wood, which they knew how to determine with great accuracy. The color of the wood, the nature of the sound made by the workpiece when lightly tapped on it with the knuckle, gave experienced master accurate information about the readiness of wood for further processing.

Small pieces of hardwood can be dried fairly quickly. by artificial means in river sand. At the same time, they acquire a golden brown color.

interesting decorative effect can be achieved by drying already finished carved products. A layer of clean river sand is poured into cast iron. Blanks are placed on top, which, in turn, are covered with a new layer of dry sand. Thus, cast iron is filled to the top, making sure that the blanks do not touch its walls. Loaded cast iron without a lid is placed on the hearth of the furnace. The closer he stands to the burning wood, the faster the drying will go. But at the same time, there is a danger that the wood will begin to smolder after a while. At the same time, if the cast iron is too far from the fire, the wood will dry slowly. The optimal distance from the fire to the cast iron masters determine empirically. As the wood dries in the areas facing the fire, a golden tan gradually appears. It smoothly turns into the natural color that the wood blank has on the opposite side. Often this is the effect woodworkers achieve when decorating finished carved products. But if you need to get a uniform color, cast iron is turned from time to time around its axis, substituting one or the other of its side to the fire. If they want to get clean, dried wood (without tanning), they put cast iron with sand and blanks in the oven after firing for the night. You can also dry wood in sand on a stove or a fire, using cans, old pots, buckets instead of cast iron.

It is known from written sources that ancient Greek sculptors dried valuable wood by burying it in dry rye. Drying wood in grain was well known in Rus'. The wooden blank was buried in grain closer to spring. For several weeks, the grain absorbed the entire “forest” from the wood.

moisture." The wood prepared in this way was kept at room temperature, and then boldly put into action, without fear of cracks. It was believed that drying raw wood in grain a few weeks before sowing had a beneficial effect on the quality of the seed. The grain, drunk with life-giving moisture, seemed to wake up from hibernation and germinate faster, once in the ground.

Burying wood in shavings is a well-known and reliable method of drying wood used by turners and wood carvers. The turner immediately buries raw turning parts into chips obtained during their turning or pre-prepared. A woodcarver buries an unfinished carved board or sculpture in the shavings. They dry evenly along with the chips. This measure saves the product from warping and cracking, especially during a long break in work.

Master woodworkers have always been inexhaustible in their invention, especially when it was necessary to obtain good material. Noticing that even in severe frosts a rather high temperature is constantly maintained inside the dunghill, they began to bury oak ridges in it. In the spring, the ridges were washed in running water and dried under a canopy in the open air.

There is one more thing to be said original way wood drying - drying on a cement floor, based on the ability of concrete to intensively draw moisture into itself. Wet 135 wood is laid on a dry concrete floor. During the day, each blank is turned over so that alternately one or the other of its face is adjacent to the cement floor.

Successful drying of wood largely depended on the size and shape of the workpiece, the presence or absence of sapwood. The master, who knows well the structure, physical and mechanical properties of wood, with the help of an ax, saw, drill and chisel, could, at his own discretion, direct the drying process in the right direction.

It is well known that it is especially difficult to dry logs, logs and sawn timber having a core inside. As a rule, when dried, they crack almost to the very core. The logs of many chopped buildings are usually dotted with numerous cracks. However, you can still find log cabins that do not have any noticeable cracks.

How did the carpenters manage to dry the logs so well? It turns out that there are still cracks in the logs, only they are hidden from our eyes. There is one large crack for each log, but they are skillfully disguised inside the log cabin. Before drying, along each log, the carpenter made a notch with an ax. The depth of the notch was approximately one third of the distance from the surface of the log to the core. After the wood dried, one deep crack formed at the place of the notch, and the remaining sections of the log remained smooth.

kimi. One large crack, as it were, absorbed dozens of smaller ones, concentrating shrinkage in the notch zone. When laying logs in a log house, carpenters placed them with cracks down. According to the same principle, Indian woodworkers dry boxwood wood, which is known to be very hard and prone to severe cracking. The boxwood block is sawn to the core, due to which shrinkage during drying is always concentrated in the cut zone.

It is known that chipped wood dries quickly and without cracks. If a log or ridge is split in half, then a plate (half) will be obtained. The half-finger expels much faster than the ridge, not only because its mass becomes half as much, but mainly because air is opened to the cut annual layers. If the half dries unevenly, then a deep crack may come from the core. Split a half in half, get a quarter (in the old way "quarter"). Unlike the plate, the quarter very rarely forms cracks during drying.

The properties of split wood were well known and skillfully used by carvers from Troitse-Sergievsky Posad, Moscow province. They split the linden ridge, depending on its thickness, into four or eight parts through the core. Perhaps this technique, which arose from the need to avoid cracking wood, to some extent suggested a plastic solution for many carved toys.

Quite hard to dry solid wood, which has a kernel. When dry, it cracks a lot. Deep cracks reach almost to the core. For example, the wood of a freshly cut apple tree is subject to severe cracking. But even the trunk of a dried apple tree - deadwood, after sawing into short ridges and barking, is covered with numerous cracks. The apple tree has a light sapwood and a dark core. Masters especially appreciate the core. The wood of the core is harder and drier, and its pores are filled with a special preservative. Sapwood, on the contrary, is loose and highly saturated with moisture. When the ridge dries, the sapwood first cracks, and then the core. To preserve the valuable wood of the core, the sapwood is cut off with an ax and the ends are smeared with paste. After removal of the sapwood, the heartwood dries fairly well, almost without forming cracks.

A lot of trouble delivers raw wood to sculptors, who most often have to deal with ridges of quite impressive size. In order not to depend on the capricious inconstancy of wood in the ridges, some sculptors glue together blocks of the necessary size and configuration from pre-dried bars. Glued blocks do not warp and crack, but the violation of the natural direction of the wood layers that form the texture pattern is often detrimental to artistic merit.

sculptures. In a sculpture made from a whole strand, rather than a glued block, the texture, on the contrary, emphasizes the form and makes it more expressive.

The masters noticed that if the core is removed from the ridge, then the appearance of cracks can be almost completely avoided. A hole with a diameter of about five centimeters is drilled in the workpiece along the core. When drying, moisture is simultaneously and evenly removed not only from the upper, but also from the inner layers of the ridge. Having completed work on the sculpture, the holes are clogged with wooden plugs.

The oldest Soviet animal sculptor V. Vatagin wrote in his book “The Image of an Animal”: “I cut my sculptures from wood, regardless of whether it is dry or damp. raw wood it is much easier to cut, the chisel cuts softer into the elastic, raw layer. Cracks will still appear, and then they will need to be repaired. But in some cases, when making a stump, the inner layers are exposed, drying occurs more evenly and cracks do not appear or appear in a smaller amount. As you can see, the sculptor dried the wood simultaneously with its plastic processing.

It is possible that one or two cracks may still appear on a finished wooden sculpture, carved, chiselled or turned product made from well-dried wood. Therefore, every master woodworker should be able to skillfully close them. Basically, the cracks go along the fibers, 137 gradually narrowing towards the core. Having hammered a small piece of putty into the crack (you can use plasticine or eglin), it is then carefully removed with a stack or a sliver. The putty takes the form of a trihedral prism. So that it does not stick to the wood, the gap is sprinkled with talc or tooth powder before molding. Guided by the resulting cast, the craftsman cuts out laths with a triangular section from the wood. They are commonly referred to as roosters. The prepared rails are lubricated with glue and hammered into cracks. Small cracks are sealed with a special putty (tooth powder is poured into the liquid solution of wood glue). The putty is tinted with dry pigments, gouache or tempera to match the color of the wood.

Digestion in oil and drying oil

Boiling the wood in salt water also prevents it from cracking. In addition, salt reliably protects wood from the penetration of putrefactive microbes into it. In the woodworking workshops of the timber industry enterprises that produce troughs and other hollowed utensils, finished products from linden, aspen and willow are boiled in a 25% solution of table salt.

Soaking wood in water reduces the appearance of cracks during subsequent drying. In the water, which protects the wood of a freshly cut tree from rotting, logs were stored during the season. Often, oak logs were immersed at the bottom of a stream or river (it is necessary that the water was running). To prevent them from floating, a load was tied to them. Apparently, the black bog oak, which they sometimes raised from the bottom of forest rivers and streams, advised the woodworkers to soak the wood before drying. The bog oak, which had lain in water for tens or even hundreds of years, was as hard as a stone, and when it dried, it did not become covered with cracks.

Boiling small pieces of hardwood in oil and drying oil not only prevents the appearance of cracks, but also enhances the decorative expressiveness of the material. Blanks for small carved items from apple, boxwood, pear and oak are boiled in natural drying oil, linseed, cotton, wood (olive) oil. During cooking, the oil displaces moisture from the wood into the air, filling the intercellular spaces. The wood boiled in oil or drying oil is then dried at room temperature. Well-dried wood acquires additional strength and moisture resistance, it is perfectly sanded and polished.

Drying logs in a vertical position on dry land is known in the southern regions of our country. For example, Uzbek carvers dried wood under a canopy in the open air.

Affordable and versatile material. It is often used for construction and interior decoration. But without special preparation, wood will not last you very long. is one of the main stages of preparing a tree for use.

An interesting and popular method of drying wood is drying wood by digestion in salt. Let's look at this method in more detail:

Drying wood by boiling in salt - how does it work?

The tree is natural material with high humidity, in the trunk of the tree there are capillaries that contain liquid. The tree absorbs this liquid from the soil and from environment. In addition to water, this liquid contains nutrients.

Cannot be used in production. Such wood is difficult to process, does not stick, and during operation it can change its shape, which will lead to cracking and the appearance of cracks in the product. Wood must be thoroughly dried before use. Ideal, for a material such as wood, is considered to be humidity not higher than 10-12%. In principle, the tree dries perfectly in natural conditions and does not require any additional effort. It is enough to place the wood in a well-ventilated area and forget about it for a while. But this causes a number of inconveniences, firstly, it is long enough, and secondly, you need to have a room in which there is enough space for drying required amount material. How can you facilitate and speed up the process of drying wood?

One of the most affordable methods is wood pulping. You can also boil wood in ordinary fresh water, but boiling wood in salt water gives a greater effect.

Drying wood digestion in salt speeds up the drying process and improves the quality of the wood. The fact is that boiling wood in salt water accelerates the process of removing the juice contained in the cells of the wood, which in turn reduces the total time required to dry the wood. Boiling the wood in salt makes it soft, it dries faster, which helps prevent cracking and changing the shape of the material during further drying. Also, boiling the tree in salt helps to improve appearance tree.

Digestion of wood in salt at home

Drying wood by boiling in salt is one of the methods that can be easily used at home.

Digestion of wood in salt is carried out using a 25% saline solution. The wood must be placed in a container filled with saline and boiled over medium heat for two to three hours. Time may vary depending on the amount of wood.

Small pieces of wood wooden details or blanks can be boiled using a large saucepan and a regular household stove. We make the solution in the following proportion: for one liter of water, about five tablespoons of salt.

For a large number trees usually use specially equipped baths. Craftsmen who use this method of drying wood often make their own bathtubs with built-in heating elements.

A fire is also suitable for warming up a container with material.

For more information about the digestion of wood in salt water, see the video. Enjoy watching!

Irina Zheleznyak, Correspondent of the online publication "AtmWood. Wood-Industrial Bulletin"

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Wood drying

A living tree has a porous structure. The pores are filled with moisture - the juices that feed the tree. Therefore, using fresh wood to make a knife handle, we risk the following -

1. Moisture begins to evaporate, and unevenly, due to the heterogeneity of the wood structure, which can lead to the formation of cracks.

2. When drying, the tree shrinks, that is, it loses volume, as a result, we have gaps between the parts of the handle.

Therefore, any fresh tree must be dried.

In industry, special drying chambers are used for drying wood. We do not need volumes, and cameras, as a rule, are not available. Therefore, we will talk about the ways that an ordinary city dweller can do.

Let's start with the simplest - natural drying. It is better to dry the tree in "churbachkas" - cuttings of trunks. The bark can be left, and the ends, tapped with a hammer, to give density to the slices, and - to cover. Here it depends on imagination - you can use resin, tar, oils, up to machine oil, oil paint and even plasticine. Prepared "firewood" must first be dried in a dry, unheated room, preferably with a stable temperature, for example, a basement in a country house, a basement. Later, after about half a year, you can move to a room with a higher temperature. If you immediately place the "churbachki" in high temperature- in the attic in the summer, for example - cracking is almost inevitable.

The type of wood should also be taken into account. Birch, alder do not crack when naturally dried. Hornbeam, beech, ash, maple, lilac crack when dry. The same is true for fruit trees.

It's easier with caps, suvels. At the beginning of summer, I cut down two medium-sized birch burls, and, together with cuttings of branches, threw them into the car. I have a station wagon, so there is a lot of space. I carried them all summer, as a result - well-dried pieces of wood J

But, this is an extreme way. J Usually, the process takes a year or two.

However, the drying process can be accelerated. And even in several ways.

Drying in newspapers.

Blanks small sizes can be dried at home, in a plastic bag. The workpiece must be wrapped in a dry newspaper, placed in a bag, tied tightly and put in a warm place - on the battery central heating, in the sunshine. After some time - 6-8 hours, you need to get a newspaper (it will turn out to be slightly damp), and replace it with a dry one. This operation should be repeated until the wood is completely dry. It is difficult to talk about the exact time of the process - it depends on the size of the piece of wood, on its initial moisture content, and on the drying temperature.

You should not rush - yes, by putting more newspapers in the bag, we will speed up the drying. But - too rapid "dehydration" of the layers of wood can lead to rupture of the fibers - to cracks.

For the same reason, it is necessary to control the hermetic closure of the bag. Moisture, in moderation, should soak into the paper and not evaporate uncontrollably.

Cooking in oil.

Small pieces of wood can be boiled in oil. Oil can be used linseed, cotton, tung. This method has long been used in the manufacture of wooden utensils. During the cooking process, the oil displaces air and water from the wood, which prevents the product from cracking. And in this case, you should not rush - the heating during cooking should be tolerably minimal. Otherwise, you can get fried "greaves" J I've been through this, so do not repeat other people's mistakes. The process takes about 6-8 hours, depending on the size of the workpiece.

Waxing.

Pieces of wood are immersed in melted paraffin. At a temperature of 40C stand for several hours. Then they take it out and dry it for several days at room temperature. The tree prepared in this way is impregnated with paraffin, which highlights its structure and slightly tones.

Evaporation / digestion.

Moisture in a living tree is not just water, but solutions of various salts and substances.

Wood masters have long noticed that removing these solutions from wood is much more difficult than ordinary water. The following drying methods are based on this.

This method has been used since ancient times. From the equipment you will need a large cast iron and ... a Russian stove J In the evening, pieces of wood are placed in cast iron - so that there is space between them for free air circulation. A little water is poured to the bottom, the cast iron is tightly closed and placed in the furnace - well-heated and freed from coals. The oven is closed.

In the morning, the tree can be taken out and dried at room temperature.

The method of digestion has long been used. That is, pieces of wood were simply boiled in water, sometimes with the addition of sawdust from the same tree. The task is to replace the solutions and juices of a living tree with water - and it is already much easier to evaporate water.

The method of digestion with salt was also changed

This method was very well described by Serjant on the Guns.ru forum -

"1. Cut off the cap, suvel.

2. We take an unnecessary pan (bucket), and throw a piece of wood there. The pan is exactly unnecessary, because in the process of cooking
a very cunning decoction is formed, which is then very troublesome to wash off. It is better to clean the wood from all sorts of tatters
birch bark and other fragile and dangling beetles. still fall off.
I consider it the birch growth as the most accessible and beautiful, the rest of the growths are boiled according to
the same technology. The log is accordingly cleaned of any debris and fragile particles. We pour water. It's comfortable
make with a faceted glass (it contains 250 ml). Water should cover the piece of wood by about a centimeter or two. The tree naturally pops up, but
let's press it to the bottom and see everything. It doesn't matter if you pour water, cold or hot - it will boil anyway. In a saucepan you can
throwing a piece of wood as much as it is not a pity, the volume of a separate piece of wood is important and not the total volume of wood.

3. We take table salt, which is not a pity. We don't make soup. Pour 2 large tablespoons per liter of water
topped with salt (glasses of water, who will count??? Huh? ;). It is possible and more, no matter how much it is a pity, it's okay, it's impossible to overdo it.
The main thing is that the water should be sugary salty. You can use clean sea water (just clean, otherwise it will be disgusting to smell like mud).
Salt will draw juices from the tree, but the tree will not saturate.

4. We find sawdust of resinous wood species. Spruce, pine, the easiest to get. We take a saw: and forward.
We need two powerful handfuls of sawdust (we rake the sawdust with both hands). It is sawdust, and not shavings from a simple hand planer.
The shavings will come from an electric planer (you can get it at the nearest sawmill or cut it yourself). I always use them.
They are quite small and are usually plentiful and easy to obtain. The more resin in the sawdust, the better.
And the smaller the sawdust, the better. We fall asleep in a saucepan. It was possible to take a saucepan and more! sawdust will give
Suveli is a pleasant ocher color. From soft pink-yellow to ocher-brown. And also resins will add strength to wood and show
texture.

5. When the water boils, reduce the fire and leave it simmering for 6-8 hours, maybe more, as long as you have enough patience.
If the saucepan is large, then you can not turn down the flame, let the water boil and bubble. But you need to watch so that the water does not
boiled away completely. Salt, sawdust, temperature and time will do their job. Add water as needed. During the cooking process
a red broth is formed. And scum. Scale is best removed immediately. It is very difficult to wash off.

6. 6-8 hours have passed (depending on the size of the piece of wood). We take out the wood. Rinse under running water from sawdust. Water from a pot
we throw it out as useless, but you can leave it for the next time, if there is where to store it. But pouring water is easier. We throw the growth
wrapping nothing on the closet. For a day or two, let it cool down.

7. We repeat the process of cooking and drying 2-4 times, depending on the volume of wood.
You can use a pressure cooker to speed up the process. Time is reduced to 4-6 hours.

8. At the last cooking, you need to quickly peel off the bark while the tree is hot. Although she herself must to this
time to fall off. Carefully!!! Hot!!! use gloves!

9. We throw it on the closet for a week or two. The wood is basically already dry, but let the remaining moisture go.
The tree will "get used" to the atmosphere. After the final drying, the tree will become like a bone, and it
it will be possible to cut, saw, grind. There will be no foreign smell. It will only smell like wood.

10. In the process of accelerated drying of wood, it must be remembered that small cracks, and therefore it is necessary to give
allowance for their removal in subsequent processing.

11. Once again I remind you that large pieces cannot be dried like this. Cracked. Necessarily. Checked.

12. After the tree finally gets used to the atmosphere, we make a knife. You will find how it is done yourself, not small ones;) In any search engine, type "" how to make a knife "" and you will be happy. It is desirable to impregnate the suvel and cap with oil and, if desired, with wax too. The tree will show the texture, "play" as they say, all the inner beauty will appear. "

After all these boilings - steaming, you can dry the tree just on the cabinet, or you can combine it with the “drying in newspapers” method