The right humidity grade is key

to Lex Pott’s window
newwindow-the-right-humidity-grade

Today we returned to Echteld for the last time to pick up our wood and transport it to different location, where some final preparations will be done before bringing it back to the studio. But first, we were very curious to see how our wood has held up in the past couple of weeks.
After sawing our tree in pieces in the beginning of December, we stacked up all our material and put it outside, where the temperature and wind minimized its chances of moulding and rotting. The right humidity grade is key: freshly cut wood has a humidity of approximately 40%, while the ideal humidity for further processing the material is 14%. Harrie had brought a hygrometer, a special measuring device for this humidity grade. It showed us that storing the wood outside had been a great decision: its humidity was now around 22,4%.

We loaded our wood into a van and drove it to Bijzondere Meubels in Hollandsche Rading, where it can rest and dry a little longer.
Furniture maker Theo van den Bergh was happy to see we had chosen to process the wood with the quarter sawing technique. By cutting the wood as we did it is very unlikely the wood will split or bend any further in these last weeks of drying, he assured us, as all the annual rings lie in the right direction. Around the first week of January, he will cut the planks in smaller pieces before we take it back to the studio in Amsterdam.