Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello new friends!  I just started purchasing instrument wood, for I am planning on building guitars. How awesome is this!.    Any how I am wondering how I should store the wood. Right now I have somewhat of a large sized almost Tupperware type thing that I have my wood in with a guitar humidifier. And the quadruple neck blank I have wont fit in so I have it in my closet with a cup of water near by. I am planning to take a two month coarse at Midwest and then take an apprenticeship there later this fall.  Needless to say I cannot wait. Thanks for the help.

Um, get one (or more) hygrometers, and measure the temp and relative humidity; head over to the mimf.com, and look for the discussion currently going on re: digital hygrometers and the like. Find out what the environment your wood's living in is like.

Honestly, just store your wood stickered and weighted, and don't worry too much about humidity. I leave mine out 'to the elements' until a few months before I use it, at which point I move it indoors to a relatively controlled environment (central heating, fairly constant temp and humidity between 35 and 65, which I only really make an effort to control tightly when I'm actually building the box itself). My stash of resawn tops/backs/sides lives indoors permanently, because it doesn't take up too much space, and I prefer not to let the thin resawn bits cycle too wildly, but the thicker stock (neck blanks, solidbody woods) has never been stored in a fully climate controlled environment.

I have been following different threads on this subject as Im extremely interested in tree to timber conversion.
I was reminded by Mattia's comments of a discussion on another forum, where a member there whitespruce {a tonewood vendor} talked about seasoning wood.
He stores some of his wood in open sheds - some of his his rough timber and logs are pictured sitting in the snow, and undergo winter to summer conditions.........
and he went on to explain his seasoning method to certain members that were babying thier wood a bit, and humidity controlling it to the extreme.
He stated {if Im remembering correctly} [roughly] that, the entire goal of seasoning wood is to get it used to the environment it is going to be in when the guitar is built, and played afterward,
and therefore he explained that the wood should suffer the changes of the seasons in ones area.
The theory behind this I believe is that this wood would be more readily adaptable to fluctuations in humidty than wood that was kept at a steady humidity and temp while curing{??}
Ive only started to get serious about building guitars over the last year or so, but I have/had been collecting, curing, and storing wood for more than a decade previous.
In those wood collecting ventures I also found that wood would evetually stabilize much better if it was left to adjust to the changes of the local envoronment, I always stored my wood in an outdoor shed that had open vents that would let in the humidity and temperatures of the seasons readily.
Mind you most of the wood I collected personally was green and then sealed in log form while curing, or salvaged from the beach {i.e. already stabilized} and then cut into lumber, stickered and stored, or pulled out of slash piles {already stabilized} and then cut into lumber stickered and stored - the occasional piece would be bought from the lumber yard.
Luckily my current shop is 50% relative humidity most of the year due to my proximity to the ocean and the area in which I live, as Im forced to buy most of my wood now I feel its nice to have a stable humidity - heres why.
I realize some people have serious swings in thier seasonal environment, fortunately I have never had to deal with such extremes.
If Im correct there is the factor of how the lumber was processed, i.e. whether the logs from which the sets were cut were kiln dried or the logs were allowed to stabilize and adjust {to thier environment} somewhat before milling, and then shipping.
Also whether the wood is from a different part of the world -> where conditions are drastically different,
and perhaps how long the cut set was sitting in that environment will have an impact on how long it will take to adjust to its new enviroment etc etc

One thing I once heard was that violin maker in Cremona would store logs submerged in ocean/saltwater for years sometimes decades in order to cure the wood before hauling them up and processing them, Ive always wondered if this was true?

Its a fascinating subject ....wood storage.... when you consider all the variables.
Im not neccesarily advocating you follow any other approach that has already been suggested to you by Hesh or Mattia.
But I just wanted to introduce a couple ideas into the mix, that I have encountered, as it seems some of people have different approaches to wood curing and storage,
and see if anyone has any feedback on this subject.

Im really interested to hear other opinions on this subject.
Cheers
charliewood

Thanks for all the information it is appreciated. 

Welcome Adam

As Charlie suggest, I would not be too concerned with the controlling the RH at the moment. Just let the wood do a little expanding and contracting with the changes. It is my understanding that the more that the wood is allowed to move around laterally with the RH changes during storage, the faster it will stabilise being less affected by RH swings later.

Just sticker out the wood (stacked with 3/4" x 3/4" strips of non-staining material, such as some scrap ply, spaced every 6 to 8" arranged in a vertical line between the stock as the stack is built up) for now. If you are concerned about extremely low humidity, make sure that the end grain of your stock is sealed (old PVC pipe glue works well) and you will be fine.

You need to be more careful about RH swings once you start gluing and bracing this bit to that as the apposing lateral grain movements can be quite destructive. Maybe as little as a few weeks or as much as a couple of months prior to gluing up, I think that most would be bringing their chosen and material into a humidity stabilised environment like a build room where things are kept around 40% to 50% RH.

Cheers

Kim