Kiln-dried or Air-dried

[Blue Fin]

I'm interested in building a Bob's Special from the Table of Offsets in Canoecraft and I'm looking at a budget now. In your experience is KD preferable over AD or vice-versa? I'm wondering whether KD would split more easily than AD.

Your thoughts or experience would be much appreciated

[Glen Smith]

Any wood used to produce strips for the hull will normally be lighter in weight if it is kiln-dried. Any wood used to make stems, gunwales or anything that needs to be bent will be easier to bend if it is air-dried. I could never find a local commercial lumber yard that sells air-dried lumber such as ash or walnut because their big market is people who want to make furniture or other things that require kiln-dried lumber. Kiln-dried wood can be bent, it's just harder to do.
As for strips splitting, I have not had any problems using AD or KD.

Enjoy your project.

[Doug in Hamilton]

Jim Kootur from Kootur Lumber in Smithville Ontario ( 20 minutes from Hamilton / Grimsby) sells both air dried ash and kiln dried.

He has cherry and other hardwoods in 4' to 8' legnths and some longer if needed. He runs a bandsaw mill and owns the kiln.

(905) 957-4217.

[Erik, Belgium]

I have no experience with AD because it simply isn't available over here in Europe. With KD wood, Europe hopes to prevent that all kind of spiders, musquitos come with the wood.

For KD wood: my first experienes with woodbending KD strips were also that it doesn't bend as easily as hoped for. But it bends.