Post #119292 by FreakBear on Tue, Oct 12, 2004 4:55 PM

As you may know, it's important to let the wood dry slowly and evenly or else cracking will occur. Turning the log day to day helps. I would dry the log in some sort of shelter (out of direct sunlight). Drying indoors is good as long as it's an option and the log seems to be bug-free.

Since you've already started removing bark, I'd go ahead and remove it all, otherwise drying will be uneven... Or keep the existing barkless area covered with some kind of breathable fabric. I think bark slows the drying (a good thing) but it may direct drying to the cut ends (bad only if the ends aren't sealed). I've removed bark before drying
and have experienced cracking.

There have been some great threads here on drying and cracking. You should definitely do a search on the forum index using "CRACKING" as a keyword.

I hope this helps!
FREAKBEAR

P.S. :
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=11186&forum=7&8

[ Edited by: FreakBear on 2004-10-12 16:56 ]

[ Edited by: FreakBear on 2004-10-12 17:06 ]