kiln room or something????

[Joel Nucifore]

Starting to build shed 16'x24'. My question is on one wall making two closets
6'x6' for D/C and compressor. And 6'x10' room well insulated with green board and a dehumidifier just for blanks and rough outs. Kind of like a kiln just no air flow as if you keep a pc in a cabinet or bagged up..... Would this work or use the space in another way.. dehumidifier will put heat in room may have to add somthing to maintain a regulated temp.???????😕

 

[MichaelMouse]

Sounds like a mildew farm in the making. If you have a choice between closed dehumidification and open air drying, take the open air. At the very least, leaving your turnings out for three days to a week so they can get rid of a lot of free water will ease the burden on the dehumidifier.

Just running a vent fan will lower the RH from what evaporation has added to the box to what ambient air is carrying. Other folks use a heat source and convective ventilation. Fortunately, wood is pretty forgiving if you don't push it too hard, so most things will work. Since a large proportion of turners believe the bunk about a year per inch, they can brag about how much faster their chosen method is, too. If you discard the 10 per cent "rule" and don't seal or bag, most roughs in the ~3/4" thick mode will be at what we need in a couple of months. Where I live it's around 10 per cent MC, some places want more, some less.

 

[john lucas]

Don't know for sure because I haven't tried it but my good friend dries blanks approx. 5x16x24 for his rocking horses using exactly what you just said. He had a spare room on the back of the shop that is about 8x8 with a ceiling that tapers from about 7ft down to 4ft. He covered the walls with foam insulation that is silver on the inside. He put one dehumidifier in there. He put a window in because it gets too hot in the summer.

 

[hockenbery]

We have a larger room off the shop 15x25 that we use as a combination office/drying room/lounge area.

We keep a dehumidifier in there set at 50%.

It lets our roughed out bowls dry but we still keep them in paper bags for the first few months to prevent too rapid drying. Hollow forms i usually put in a box for 2 days and they are dry.

the danger with low humidity is taking out moisture too fast.

Happy turning
-Al

 

[Mark Levitski]

If it's feasible, one could just dedicate some shelf space for roughouts to dry in the general shop. We keep our shop at about 36-42% RH and this works to keep the tools from rusting too. There is enough air circulation with the DC and air filtration, but the way you store or stack the work can help a lot with how controlled the drying is. For humidity control we use a dehumidifier in the summer and the woodstove in the winter. Like Al, we use brown paper bags for most of our stuff.

 

[KellyDunn]

Joel. unless you are production turning thats a waste of space. If you want to go ahead and do it it will work. You would need a fan to keep air moving and a waste pipe for water to leave the room from the dehumidifier. If only fifty to a hundred bowls and smaller blanks make a convection kiln from an old fridge.