Very sensable idea, but I am not sure if it would apply to this small bit of pretty much dry wood. It would be very sensable if a person had just milled up a log, and wanted to speed up the process. I would also wonder what wood would be in the kiln at the time(obviously they won't dry this amount of wood by itself), would they mix a wood like Cocobolo in with any other woods that are going to be dried? Seems like drying schedules could be pretty varied, and using an overly aggressive schedule would increase the rate of damage, using a slower schedule is going to waste kiln time.
Your comments make good sense with the cost of energy rising, and a person should really consider that and how they are drying wood. If you have space that is already conditioned and have time available, it can make good use of the space with little difference in cost. If you have to dedicate and micro control or force accelerated drying then you really need to look over the costs to value. I personally limit 95% of my drying to existing available controlled space(or use uncontrolled for early drying). If I am going to crank up fans, and use forced air to speed things up a bit, I make sure I have a fair amount of wood making use of that effort. If I use raise the temp, drop the humidity, and move the air I make sure it is really needed, because it does cost a lot.
Drying and aclimating costs really make strong case for allowing yourself a good deal of time(meaning have a stock of ready wood) so you can have wood ready to use while you allow a back stock plenty of time to get ready for use.
Rich
Good points! It really comes down to how affective you can be at it. I've thought about building my own and even planned one out but I get most of my wood dried and rarely do I have anything I need to have dried. The only reason I know about the local guy with will do it is because my neighbor chopped down a perfectly good maple tree and I wanted it. I'm going to be looking into all of this bit more as my grandpa has a few black walnut trees that will be coming down soon and I would hate to see any of it not end up in my shop!
If anything, building your own kiln is a great learning experience on how drying wood affects it's stability.