Kiln Drying

Okanagan Timber Frame is very pleased to announce that we are now offering our clients in house kiln dried timbers.

Utilizing our own, on site, dehumidification kiln we can offer a Kiln Dried product with a cost premium not significantly more than our traditional standing dead timber (which is in limited supply).

This will become the new standard for Okanagan Timber Frame.

The advantages of a kiln dried timber are plain to see.

Kiln dried timbers show less checking than other timbers. The carefully staged conditioning and drying of the timbers is a controlled environment minimizes the checking of the timbers. While no process will completely eliminate checking, the combination of free of heart material and kiln drying is the best prevention.

Tighter joints. Because the entire frame is brought to a similar moisture content levels, and essentially pre-shrunk before the final planing and before any joinery is cut, we see less joint separation over the life of the frame. If the wood placed in the frame is of different moisture content, as the wetter wood shrinks through the natural drying process that takes place in your completed frame, spaces will appear in your joinery. This is a natural and expected occurrence in timber frame, but the joint separation can be minimized by using a uniformly dry material.

Pitch is crystallized during the final stages of drying the timber. Pitch, or sap is the sticky substance occassionally appears on the surface of timbers as small droplets of amber coloured stickiness, or runs out of the timber in a small stream. This can be a problem associated with the first years of a non-kiln dried timber frames life. Setting the pitch at high temperatures prevents this sticky substance from seeping to the surface of the timber…. or out of the timber onto your furnishings, by evaporating the chemical components that are in a liquid state at room temperature.