It’s not “made” yet, but it came from a tree I fell and using a chainsaw mill to get flat slabs to play with on my Lowrider! The pictures at the bottom are a coffee table I’m making from one of the slabs. I am getting much better at keeping the saw flat now!
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Nice! You gotta dry them for a few years though…
Could be dead fall ?
Still wet. 
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For the most part the boards under 1.5" will dry pretty quick in the sun. I have a moisture meter and during summer I was getting 1.5" boards dry in 4 weeks from out of reading to 5%. It was a stupid hot and dry summer though, so that might have helped!
I also have a workshop that has a dehumidifier so I paint the ends and let them sit in there temperature controlled in the winter, we’ll see how long they take in the winter though!
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Still wet but free minus my labor! I had a tornado go through our property and bring down about 30 trees, so I have a bunch of lumber that I’ll get to play with in the coming years!
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Solar Kiln. Dry in a month
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I am so jealous right now… 
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yep! That’s on the build list this winter!
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Are you using a moisture meter with hammer-in prongs or just press-in pins? I recall one of the woodworking Youtube channels talking about how the handheld ones that you don’t hammer in tend to read low because the moisture level is a gradient throughout the board, then you surface one side and it cups because you’ve exposed a wetter section.
Pretty sure that’s what happened to one of the pieces I was dimensioning for my desk top. It had been sitting outside but covered for 4-5 years then brought inside into my enclosed garage for 2 months. I flattened everything, glued it all up, went back to it a couple of days later and one of the 3 pieces had cupped noticeably. Ended up being a waste of all the work I’d done jointing the wide faces and had to run a makeshift router sled over the thing anyway. Really made me wish I’d torn down the MPCNC and made an LR3 
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I am using the klein meter, I already know it’s not accurate, but the 500 price tag on the wagner just isn’t it for me lol.
What I watched on youtube is that as long as you get the reading to match boards from the home store that have been in your space you’re good.
every board I’ve cut has been wildly high, but I’ve waited until it’s matching the 2x4’s in the garage which is 5%.
I can tell you it’s not all butterflies and rainbows, I had to buy an electric hand plane because my first few warped like 2-3 inches of warping lol
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Yeah, that’s basically turning it into a relative measurement which is a great approach. You don’t really care what the percentage is, just that it’s dry in a relative sense.
The issue I saw was that the outside dries very quickly and then exponentially slower as you go further in, so if the surface is reading 5% then 1" deep could be 10%, 2" deep could be 20%, etc. So your completely equalized 2x4 is likely 5% all the way through while your new slabbed material will start at 20% all the way through, the outside will drop to 5% very quickly but then it takes a long time for that moisture inside to work its way out. Makes me wonder how to set up a long term experiment to track that in semi realtime, now…
I wonder if you could cheat the cheaper measurement device a bit by hammering some pin nails in and measuring between those? I suspect it’d always read high because of the much better contact with the wood and a thicker mass of wood so that’s probably not realistic.
Depends on how thick your material is and how sensitive the project is to warping at the end of the day, though!
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if you just bored a few forsner bit holes right in the middle, you’d get a better reading… make a new hole each time you measure. Could you do that on a surrogate piece to represent the batch since obviously you wouldn’t do that on the actual piece?
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Any concerns with case hardening? 4 weeks in a solar is kinda fast for a thick slab.
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Oh I’m not sure on that one. I’ve never done it. I just know I’ve seen stuff on it being much faster than natural drying. Sorry if my post came across like I knew a bunch. Not at all the case 
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Their’s always the concern for sure, but kinda the same concept of going into an actual kiln as long as the temps get high enough.
Sure, but how many people build solar kilns with temperature controlled fans and a humidity ramp down?
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No one lol, you make good points for sure, I’ll keep an eye on the wood, it’s not something I’ll be selling anyway just learning on and making some home furniture
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Nice!
I never have access to large chunks of wood to need to mill it down myself. The closest I’ve come is turning a few logs into bowls.
I always buy rough cut lumber from the hardware store. Anytime I change the thickness of the material, I wait a week before continuing processing. I’ve had a few boards warp after that first cut on the bandsaw. Usually, once it warps, I can run it through the planer and flatten both sides and it won’t warp again after that.
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I have 6x 4’ logs, 9” diameter that I’ve been saving for 4 years. Just got a nice shiny new bandsaw and plan to process them once I get back from Jamaica in a couple weeks. Fun stuff
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