The Characteristics of Vacuum Drying Disks of Domestic Softwoods (I)

국산 침엽수재 원판(圓板)의 진공건조(眞空乾燥) 특성 (I)

This study was carried out to investigate the vacuum drying characteristics of 50mm- and 75mm- thick tree disks of some domestic softwoods for substituting the conventional hardwoods as the materials for wood crafts. Though the elapsed drying times from green to in-use moisture content(MC) were largely shortened by vacuum drying, the tree disks treated by EWS couldn't be dried to in-use MC, and so sapwood stains also were occurred severely. We suggest EWS treatment is undesirable for the species with very high sapwood portion or vacuum drying with hot water circulation heating system. Heart checks were slight, but sapwood checks, which have never been trouble in drying process of tree disks, were severe. For the reasonable explanation it is suggested MC differences between sapwood and heartwood were large and most of tree disks had already no barks before drying test. Ginkgo was vacuum-dried with very slight drying defects such as heart checks, sapwood checks. V-cracks and sapwood stains. In Korean red pine and pitch pine V-cracks were severely occurred. And it was found the special feature that most of these defected tree disks contained several V-cracks within one tree disk. It can be considered as the causes that the region of sapwood was defected by the several checks at the early drying stage because of the steep MC gradient along the radial direction, and then at the later drying stage the drying stresses due to differential shrinkage were concentrated on these brittle spots.