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                           SEASONING OF WOOD

               A TREATISE ON THE NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL
                 PROCESSES EMPLOYED IN THE PREPARATION
                      OF LUMBER FOR MANUFACTURE,
                   WITH DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF ITS
                 USES, CHARACTERISTICS AND PROPERTIES


                            _ILLUSTRATIONS_
                                  BY
                           JOSEPH B. WAGNER
                         AUTHOR OF "COOPERAGE"


                            [Illustration]


                               NEW YORK
                        D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY
                             25 PARK PLACE
                                 1917


                          COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
                        D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY


                          THE.PLIMPTON.PRESS
                          NORWOOD.MASS.U.S.A




                                PREFACE


The seasoning and kiln-drying of wood is such an important process in
the manufacture of woods that a need for fuller information regarding
it, based upon scientific study of the behavior of various species at
different mechanical temperatures, and under different drying
processes is keenly felt. Everyone connected with the woodworking
industry, or its use in manufactured products, is well aware of the
difficulties encountered in properly seasoning or removing the
moisture content without injury to the timber, and of its
susceptibility to atmospheric conditions after it has been thoroughly
seasoned. There is perhaps no material or substance that gives up its
moisture with more resistance than wood does. It vigorously defies the
efforts of human ingenuity to take away from it, without injury or
destruction, that with which nature has so generously supplied it.

In the past but little has been known of this matter further than the
fact that wood contained moisture which had to be removed before the
wood could be made use of for commercial purposes. Within recent
years, however, considerable interest has been awakened among
wood-users in the operation of kiln-drying. The losses occasioned in
air-drying and improper kil