> “But if you want softwoods to manufacture windows, doors, furniture and things like that, the continuous process is not the one to go with,” Avramidis says. “You have to go back to the batch process. Why? Because you cannot have stress relief in the continuous process. And, of course, hardwoods should be dried in boxes only.”
Aha, yes, of course.
(I have no idea what stress relief means here, or why hardwoods are different :/)
The article talks about stress relief when it went down the rabbit hole of tiny mom & pop mills who were turning their kilns off every night because they didn't have a third shift and later discovering that turning them off periodically produces better lumber because it allows the wood to relieve stress and suffer less distortion.
However, the continuous process is basically just a slow moving conveyor belt where you are constantly feeding green wood in one end and dried lumber is constantly being spit out of the far end. I don't see why you couldn't incorporate ambient air chambers in strategic places on the belt to destress the lumber, at the cost of making the entire production line somewhat longer.