Official Luthiers Forum!

I am currently still in my Restoration phase of learning. But, I have started to gather some Back and side sets. How do I make a room have almost no humidity for proper storage?

I use "humidity bags" to guard against swings, and stabilize all the wood to 42%, put the parts together at what ever humidity I have (no gluing for most of August-Oct) then back in the bags. If you own your own house, you need a dehumidifyer and try to 'airtight' the room a bit.

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Here is what a Parlor Guitar is for!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa8PkjO6_I

I can handle the 40% in the house, I thought the 6% -8% would take more than in home w/ a dehumidifier

Are you talking wood EMC or relative humidity of the environment?

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Do you have a wood moisture gauge? I don't even have one of those in the 'must have soon' collumn. All the wood I buy I store for so long.....way too long before I can use it.

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Here is what a Parlor Guitar is for!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa8PkjO6_I

I keep my workshop at 40-50% humidity and all my tonewood is stored in the shop. As already stated youre confusing wood EMC and relative humidity of the environment. The only way youre going to get 6-8% relative humidity in your house is by moving to the Sahara Desert or Antarctica.

Not confusing the 2. Finding out there are 2 (RH & EMC)
Any wood moisture gauges you'd like to recomend?

This brings up another issue Todd. Even if wood from a supplier is less than 6%MC and has been in the shop a few months is it really seasoned, stable, and ready to build with? I built one for a violin maker the other day and we had a long talk about seasoning wood. He felt pretty strongly that if it had been cut in the last 20 years it was "unseasoned" and should be baked or as he says he does, use a drying box. I know many builders won't use stuff that has not been in their shop at least several years. I've been putting off baking tops but after talking to this guy and Frank Ford I'm going to start. There are great threads here on that and on the MIMF as well.
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

While dry and cut wood storage was the point of my post here is what I want to measure the MC for mainly.
I had a Walnut tree chopped up. The wood now rests behind a background in my humidity controlled photography studio with a fan sucking air through.

Would a cheapy like this work? I see they can hit $200
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/D ... mber=96472

It is my understanding you only need to get the relative humidity of the room down to about 30 % to get your wood to a moisture content of 6%-8% . I believe the formula used for air drying is one year of drying for one inch of wood thickness. if your plates are 1/8 of an inch then it would take about a month and a half (or 1/8 of 12 months) to dry your wood if starting at the "green" saturated level of about 30% moisture content , much less if your wood has been sitting around awhile. here is a moisture content calculator I found online . http://www.csgnetwork.com/emctablecalc.html . Jody

I now know more than I did before! Thanks all!