Hammond Organ Cabinet Construction
Written by on January 12, 2017
WOOD PREPARATION
Although I do have a Norwood Lumbermate 2000 bandsaw mill, (which I will talk about on another post) this time I visited my buddy who specializes in rough sawn cypress. He uses a Woodmizer LT40 I believe, and has so many boards laying around that I can wander around and find most anything I need. It’s great. So I took off with my old Chevy van with my Daddy’s old trailer I restored to the mill.
Here’s the area I found which had a lot of different sizes and thicknesses:
Here’s a picture of the trailer loaded with what I needed for the project:
The next stop was my solar dry kiln. I plan on posting later about the construction of my kiln. As most of you probably know, wood freshly sawn is full of water and bug larvae. It is necessary to dry the lumber at a high temperature in order to stabilize it for indoor use. Sometimes wood can be air-dried, but that usually is not adequate to prevent movement of the piece with furniture meant for indoor use. Also, bug larvae can remain present in air dried stock. The lumber you buy at the store is kiln dried and stable. That is the purpose of the dry kiln.
I have a local friend Wayne who was actually over the large computer room in Huntsville Alabama during the Apollo moon project. He designed a dry kiln which is awesome. I built one, and it has reached temperatures in excess of 180 degrees Fahrenheit using only the sun as a heat source. It can dry a load of pine to about 10% moisture content in only a few days.
Here’s a picture of me backed up to the kiln, ready to unload my cypress:
Having dried in the kiln for about a week, the moisture content was in the 6% to 8% range, which is acceptable for interior use. I have a moisture meter that I use to check the pieces. I unloaded the pieces from the kiln and put them into my new shop. It’s also good to let the lumber acclimate to the climate inside the shop for a few weeks. I let it it for a few weeks prior to beginning. But it was time for the fun to begin!