You did very good, nice wood. Now seal the ends and put it somewhere out of the weather. I knew a fellow that owned a saw mill, mostly for furniture, and he used old paint laying around but wax is the best. Also like stated I would coat the knots, it may stop it from cracking, a 50-50 shot, if it starts to crack near the knot, drill a hole at the end of the crack and hope that it stops.
In about 1 year or so I would move them into a basement and let it dry further, and if you stack them, make sure you use stickers. In order to really see how much moisture you have you should get a moisture meter. A decent one is a Mini-Lingo that reads between 6-20% moisture and costs about $100. When the moisture content is down to about 10% you are gettng close to it being workable. Then it can be oversized and then let it acclimate to where it is going to be (house). Chekc the readings on good dry day in the area, not a rainy day as humidity affects the wood even indoors. Wood is always moving, expands in summer and contracts in winter-relative humidity.
You mentioned something about planning, if you do I hope you meant by hand, unless you have a planner with a spiral cutter and carbide inserts, as a regular knife blade will tear-out that irregular grain/figure. Even by hand with jointer plane you would have to cut it on an angle to avoid tear-out. This shouldn't be done anyway while the wood is still wet.
Good luck and let us know how you make out.
Last edited by JDW; 01/17/09 12:19 PM.
