{"id":22618,"date":"2025-01-11T10:30:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T10:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/art\/cut-dried-assessing-wood-moisture-content\/"},"modified":"2025-01-11T10:30:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T10:30:21","slug":"cut-dried-assessing-wood-moisture-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=22618","title":{"rendered":"‘Cut & Dried’ & Assessing Wood Moisture Content"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Editor\u2019s note: The third edition of \u201cCut & Dried\u201d should arrive in February. You can sign up to be notified when it arrives here<\/a>. In this post, author Richard Jones <\/a>explains his update to Chapter 6. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Rombald\u2019s Moor: The opening image to Chapter 6.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In 2021, I decided I ought to update \u201cCut & Dried<\/a>,\u201d and the third reprint of it at the end of 2024 was a good opportunity to do so. For a long time I had been aware of two ways to determine wood moisture content, i.e., the \u201cdry basis\u201d (db) and the \u201cwet basis\u201d (wb). In Section 6.6 Measuring Wood Moisture Content in the already printed book, I emphasised we woodworkers use only wood\u2019s dry weight as the base weight to assess wood moisture content. This dry basis methodology wasn\u2019t actually named in the book and nor was the alternative wet basis methodology named or described except the wet basis was hinted at in an exchange I had with a furniture student at the end of page 76 and into page 77.<\/p>\n

However, since the last printing of \u201cCut & Dried\u201d in 2019, things have evolved and environmental issues are ever more pressing. The drive is on to reduce carbon emissions, reduce particulates and pollutants etc. I am not here to proselytise on these issues but burning biomass fuel in the form of logs, wood chips, pellets etc. is one potential source of particulates and pollution. Many people and organisations around the world burn biomass fuel for heating homes, cooking, industrial boilers etc., and burning wet fuel is both inefficient and pollutant. The U.K. government, for example, created legislation to regulate the supply of biomass fuel, including setting the maximum moisture content levels for biomass fuel suppliers, and putting in place organisations to verify that such suppliers meet required government standards.<\/p>\n

Crucially the authorised method of determining wood moisture content in the biomass fuel sector is the wet basis. It\u2019s the case that the biomass fuel sector might be considered peripheral to us woodworkers with our focus on making things out of wood, and where we want to know its moisture content, but the biomass fuel sector, like use, require felled trees, so there is an environmental impact which deserves some discussion in \u201cCut & Dried.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate the difference between dry basis and wet basis calculations for wood moisture content I\u2019m including some text from the latest iteration of section 6.6 of \u201cCut & Dried,\u201d but modified slightly for this blog post\u2019s purposes.<\/p>\n

A learner approached me with the following figures for a piece of wood both before and after oven-drying:<\/p>\n