News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden lad... by jaggederest on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @04:49PM (#17510167)
Negative pressure might be more useful. Boil out the water under half an atmosphere, and replace the atmosphere with dried nitrogen and a chunk of desiccant.

You'll probably damage the wood if you do that though. Now I want to try it in my vacuum chamber, but I'm not sure it'll hold vacuum for weeks/months at a time.

Re:The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden lad... by namibj on Thursday July 12, 2018 @01:17PM (#17516677)
Just use a pipe with conductive plating on the inside and operate it in the 3-digit MHz range as a waveguide. Make sure that the core of the wood has more power than the outside, and that you e.g. move it around lengthwise if you get longitudal resonance in the pipe. Add some desiccant, and make sure the way you couple the energy into the chamber can handle this resonance without frying itself through reflection. Might not need the vacuum, but it should be easy to construct it in a way that it can hold a vacuum of around 10~200 mBar, e.g. with a simple one-stage pump. If you make sure the pump doesn't take in much moisture, there shouldn't be an issue for it.