Traditional methods of drying timber in New Zealand were largely reliant on stacking the sawn timber in layers with spacing pieces outdoors, and letting the sun and wind do the work over a period of a few weeks in summer and much longer, if ever in winter. Some timber was pre-dried in the open air and then “topped-off:, i.e. brought down to the required moisture content in the controlled atmosphere of a drying kiln. Older types of drying kilns in the USA were of the “wigwam” or conical type