How to dry big lumber?

Question

Years ago, my friend and I were helping to clear out an old man's shop after he died. Among the other stuff was a block of oak about two feet on a side. We marveled at how he was able to produce a piece of wood:

1. That was Perfectly square
2. Had no cracks for a BIG single piece of wood

My neighbor had a big (38 inches across the stump) white ash tree cut down and invited me to do with the remains as I will. I've been splitting wood, intending to make hammer and maybe axe handles and I have been eyeing that monster trunk thinking of the old man's creation.

While I am confident I can cut out a two foot cube and if it is oversized enough, I might be able to make it square, I am also confident that without proper processing it will split.

Does anybody have any good ideas on how the old man might have been able to keep that, probably 200+ pound piece of wood from splitting as it dried?

I will add that the old man had a pretty substantial machine shop. It is not impossible that he set up a complicated controlled temperature/humidity kiln and dried it over a year or something.

Answer 1

You can't reliably dry wood in large section. It's done and done successfully¹ but it's not something you can set out to do and know you'll get a good result because of many factors, not least of which is: wood. Wood likes to mess with us sometimes. Well, a lot.

So before anything else it requires a bit of luck.

Does anybody have any good ideas on how the old man might have been able to keep that, probably 200+ pound piece of wood from splitting as it dried?

Long, slow drying will often be mentioned as a key factor but as anyone who has dried a lot of wood will tell you it can do weird things on you as it dries and that's even if you do everything right and are air-drying².

One guess is that the wood was taken from an initially larger piece — possibly much larger — and that cube was just the central core chunk (all the wood around it effectively being sacrificial). Starting with big trees, like really big, is one or the chief ways chunks with minimal or no cracks are achieved.

But honestly, without any idea of the grain in the cube, where it came from, how old it was, there's just no way to be sure about anything. It could have come from a sinker. Prior to drying it could have been aged floating in a pond for a decade. It could have been previously dried before he got to it so the old guy had no hand in the drying at all. He could have gotten a chunk from a tree felled nearby or on his land during the Kennedy administration, hauled it into a barn and forgotten about it until the new millennium. Or maybe he set out to do this and cut it oversize (way oversize) and maintained a covering of damp towels or newspapers for five years as it dried super slowly.

You might like to look into how go boards are produced, but note these are softwood and not hardwood and that key difference may be significant.

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¹ Despite the reputation for it being impossible you can dry entire tree trunks successfully.

² Everything right includes some or all of the following: well sealing the end grain with Anchorseal or a similar product (or melted wax); ensuring good airflow all around e.g. by stickering; minimizing or eliminating direct sunlight; if the wood is in a stack weighting the top; regular prayers and sacrifices to the wood gods. That last one might be a joke.