First tiki, bark stripping and wet wood question

Found some wood in the area that people had trimmed ready to toss out. Sealed the top and bottom. So now Im ready. I started to use a wonder bar (pry bar) to hammer out the bark, seems to work quite well, is this acceptable?

Second question, the wood underneith the bark is wet, should I continue to get rid of the bark, then let the wood sit to dry out? And for how long?

Thank for your helpful insite tiki master!

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 ]

Great advice, next question, how do I, meek nubian in the realm of tiki wisdon, know when the wood is dry enough to start my creation? Is it best to start when its almost dry, or does it even matter, since dry is dry, and can the wood even be TOO dry?

Thank you owe grand master's of tiki wisdom

Try to quit worrying about everything and just do it.............you'll learn how wood reacts eventually. Every piece of wood is different. Just carve it and let it dry like it wants. Your wasting time here!

Learn now, perfect it later...

Let's go!

Tiki G.