0% moisture?

[JohnnyR]

Last thing I just did for a bed I made was cut the support slats. I bought some poplar a few weeks ago & cut four slats. 9% moisture content. I cut the fifth slat out of another piece of poplar that I had lying around for who knows how long - at least a year, maybe a decade. When I picked it up it was light as a feather. I checked the moisture content (surface reading meter) and it registered 0%! I checked other wood in the shop and everything registered 7-9%. The wood is definitely poplar, bought it as such and it has the familiar tight grain and yellow/green streaks. Just checked the cut off and found one spot that read 1%. Same reading rough or planed, unfinished. How is this possible?

 

[marinosr]

It's not possible. The equilibrium moisture content of any piece of wood at any environmentally-relevant conditions is going to be >4%. Wood dried in a 220F oven is by convention 0%, though in reality there is still a few tenths of a percent of residual moisture in oven-dry wood. I would guess that your meter is poorly calibrated at the low end.

 

[Jeff]

I have a Ligno pin meter that will only read down to a minimum of 5-6% (the Ligno specification). I've never heard of a moisture meter that can be recalibrated by the manufacturer so I suspect that your meter is bad/broken, etc.