Moisture meters

[Bellhurst]

Has anyone used these on cut coppice? We have timber stacks of varying maturity and need a way of testing sap/water content before logging. Amazon shows many very different-looking instruments at all prices from £10 up to hundreds. Also, can they tell sap from water?

[SimonFisher]

I have a Euroheat AC101 Wood Moisture Meter which I use on wood which has been cut for reasons of thinning/felling (as opposed to coppicing) and is in various states of processing and drying. As our work is small-scale and for our own domestic use only, we tend to cross-cut into logs, split, and store the logs soon after felling - often the same day. We tend not to have long lengths stacked drying.

Mine and most of the other moisture meters I've read about do advise that you take the measurement across freshly exposed grain and not end grain. For me, that means pulling a log out, making a fresh cut with an axe or maul, and testing. That way I get a measurement from the centre of the wood that is drying. For you, that might mean, cutting a short length out of one of the pieces before splitting and measuring.

I'd be interested if anyone knows of a way of testing using a different type of meter that doesn't involve cutting and splitting - perhaps boring a hole into a log and inserting a probe?

You could of course measure without using a meter at all by drying a sample piece in an oven having measured its weight before starting and keep going till its weight remains constant. A quick search on Google reveals lots of information about this method.

Why do you need to differentiate between sap and water?

[SimonFisher]

And here's a method (and lots of warnings) for measuring wood moisture using a microwave oven.

[tracy]

We use this one:

http://peplers.blogspot.com/2010/08/using-moisture-meter-to-check-firewood.html

[SimonFisher]

I'm really not sure about those photographs showing the measurements being taken from the end grain though ;-)

[tracy]

No lies were told!

[SimonFisher]

I wasn't suggesting otherwise.

I've some ash that was felled and cut to final log size about a month ago. It was then giving an average reading of 30% across the face grain of a split pieces. Just now, I've just taken an end grain reading of 19% from one piece. Then I split it and measured it across the grain in the middle of the split. That read 26%.

[tracy]

Yeah, we do check the middles now too, and try to dry our wood for 2 years. Luxury for those who have the space!