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Pro tip: check your wood moisture meter's calibration at 20% MC before you frame a whole garage
I was building a 24x24 detached garage in Bend and trusted the meter I'd been using for 3 builds. It read 11% on a batch of 2x6s that were actually sitting around 19%, so every wall I framed that week went up wet. Framing crew came back and found diagonal cracks at two corners after the drywall went on, which cost me $1,400 to fix and a full weekend of rework. So check yours against a known sample before you trust it on a big job. Has anyone else had a meter drift that bad, or did I just get a bad batch?
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terry_thomas3d ago
Had the same thing happen on a deck job last summer. My old pin meter was reading way low so I grabbed a cheap oven and did the weight test on a few cutoffs, weighed them wet, dried them at 220 until the weight stopped dropping, then did the math myself. Turns out I was off by almost 8 points, which is a huge deal when you're nailing down deck boards. Now I keep a known dry scrap in the truck and check the meter against it before any big pour or frame up. Cost me a whole Saturday of rework, not $1,400, but still not a mistake I want to make twice.
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