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Not quite boards in fact.
10mm thick cedar shingles.
Folliwing my last thread I successfully cut a load of 10mm tiles, but after much blood, sweat and tears I realised I only had about 1\3 of what I needed and had no desire to cut any more myself.
So I ordered a pack of shingles off the bay, and although they're pretty and everything, they are freshly sawn from unseasoned logs.
I've stacked them in the shed with sticks between each shingle... but how long will I have to wait?
A week?
A month?
A year?
They are 100mm x 400mm x 10mm so could easily warp beyond useability, but I'm hoping that they'll dry fairly quickly at that size, and that being red cedar I might just get away with it.
General rule for air drying timber for interior use is a year per inch of thickness.
However, shingles live outside obvs so I'm not sure you'd want them as low a moisture content as you would if you were making a table or a milk bottle holder for example.
The shingles I covered my shed in were all made from kiln dried hardwoods from the scrap bin and predictably they all swelled up as soon as a bit of damp weather came.
I could be wrong but I think you don't want to dry them out too much, so long as you are accommodating shrinkage with a good overlap and ting.
I'm not gonna use them as shingles though..
They're gonna be floor tiles in my van. They were just a cheapish source of conveniently sized wood..
Going by the rule of thumb I'm looking at around 4 months then.
Oh I see. 🙂
You might want to seal each end with pva or paint. Wood dries quickest from the ends and painting the ends can help to reduce the speed at which moisture escapes and therefore help minimise cracking.
Make sure you got good air flow around them which will help reduce mold.
Wooden cobbles were tried outside hospitals in Victorian London to reduce noise from iron-tyred carriages and horses' hooves but they turned out to be bad at resisting rain and horse poo and pee so the idea was abandoned. Just sayin' like.
🙂
Good advice
Must remember not to pee and crap on the van floor after the tiles are laid.
Couldn't you just buy a sheet of fair faced veneered ply and cut it into tiles to achieve the same effect without all of the stability problems?
I wish that I could PP
But I'm doing this in the least spendy way, recycling found objects where possible, and it's become a matter of stubborn pride now