Why are drying wood and seasoning wood different?

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Why are drying wood and seasoning wood different?

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Drying wood really only happens on the outside of the log. Drying off the surface moisture.
Seasoning wood allows the moisture inside the log to dry out over time (or can be sped up in a kiln). Non seasoned wood doesn’t burn that easily, or well. All I had to burn during the TX storm was unseasoned wood, and it was a pain to light, and keep lit.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Seasoning is a specific way of drying wood to get certain properties at the end

Your standard lumber is kiln dried which heats it up and evaporates basically all the water from the wood. Kiln drying is fast and consistent which is why we use it for general purpose lumber

But what if you’re building a boat? Then you need to “season” your timbers to different levels. You don’t want to use “green” timbers for the parts of your boat that are underwater because they’ll shrink as they lose some moisture, but you also don’t want completely dry timbers because they’ll grow unevenly and split causing leaks. Slightly dried wood is good for the stuff below water because then it swells just a little bit. Much drier stuff is used for the sides and deck, but still not completely dry because its going to be exposed to water and will absorb some of that and swell/split.

Basically seasoning and drying are technically synonyms but they are generally used to refer to different processes