If you use your oven, toaster oven, or micro wave. The steps will be the same. Weigh your blanks before you start and mark the weight down. Heat your blanks. Must have oven set above boiling point of water but need not be much higher. Here is where the difference starts. With a kitchen oven you are heating and maintaining a large space for a small volume of materials that you are drying. In the toaster oven you have a much smaller area to heat and maintain. This equals less power and less cost. In the micro wave oven you are not using heat to dry, but the moisture in the woods is vaperized by the micro waves and turned to steam, thus generating it's own heat. In the two heated ovens you can put your blanks in for whatever time you choose, remove, and reweigh. When your blanks no longer loose weight they are dry. In the micro wave oven you only have to put your blanks in for about 30 seconds, remove, and reweigh. A micro wave is a much faster and less expensive way to dry blanks. A word of cauction however. Don't use the family's every day micro wave or toaster oven. Go to the thrift store and buy one for cheap. Also just because 30 seconds time in the micro oven seems to be working, don't put your blanks in to much longer per time. They may split, char, smoke, warp, and crack. One could also use a moisture meter to see how dry the wood is. Ideal would be zero, but 6 or 7 would be fine. Jim S
