Kiln dried oak beams exude a traditional, classic look and can work with various other types of materials. For instance, you can use these types of oak beams to decorate your home in a traditional way or mix it with décor made of metal for a more modern feel. Oak wood tends to look better with age, and you will love the fact that with just one primary purchase, you have wood beams that will be sure to stand the stand the test of time. The durability and strength of this wood variety is well known and you can be sure that no matter what you use the beams for, they will last for years without diminishing in strength.

What are the benefits of beams this way? As a matter of fact, kiln dried oak beams provide a method of going against the limitations that result from erratic conditions of the weather. Just as in air drying, these tend to use unsaturated air as its medium for drying. Almost all the world’s timber is dried in industrialised kilns.

There are a few things to keep in mind when drying oak beams. For one thing, wood heated this way can be dried to a low content of moisture using solar or conventional drying. In a conventional method, the time it takes to dry oak tends to be more in solar drying and less in conventional drying.

One benefit of kiln drying as compared to conventional air drying is that you have more control of the final content of moisture and there is generally a higher throughput. Regardless of weather conditions, solar drying and conventional fire drying enable wood to be dried to specific moisture contents. For larger scale operations of drying wood, conventional oven drying tends to have more efficiency compared to regular air drying. When drying oak beams, all the insects and fungi of the wood are killed with the temperatures employed.

This is not the case when air drying wood, since there are no guaranteed temperatures for air drying timber. This process consists of heat introduction to beams made of oak wood. This may be direct with the use of electricity or natural gas or indirect, such as heat exchange using steam. It is also possible to dry oak beams using solar energy. To achieve effectively dried oak beams, at every stage, deliberate control of air circulation, relative humidity and temperature is provided. This is to produce effectively dried oak. Oak is then stacked in wood drying kiln chambers for this purpose. The beams are then fitted with tools for control and manipulation of the relative humidity and the temperature so that the air can circulate throughout the stack of oak.

Timber companies tend to use ovens that are compartment type rather than any other type. Air is circulated through a furnace that is full of a static batch of oak beams. The oak remains stationary in these types. Timber companies generally find this method of drying well suited to their needs.