My advice, (I've been drying wood commercially for twenty years) - dont bother, its a waste of time for the water that you drive off. If its freshly felled the rh is around 35%. The level will fall rapidly to around 23-25%, the level at which the unbound water has dried off, and then the slow drop will occur over a number of months and years to around 15-17%, thereafter it can become drier but really only through a final kiln dry.
Wood becomes dry by evaporation from the surface and then moisture level stabilistion occurs slowly, water then evaporates slowly from the surface and then stabilisation occurs, water slowly leaching through a material that is anywhere from 450Kg/m3 to upwards of 750Kg/m3.
Microwaves make it hot, they steam a bit, feel wet on the surface and then the surface dries, but its still sopping wet in the middle. Some people swear by it as a method, but frankly I think they are wasting their time.
If you have a dimensionally consistent blank, say 8" x 2", weigh it first. I take it that this is freshly felled? The average dried weight of Cedar of Lebanon is 520 kg/m3 This means that the blank you have should weigh, dried weight, 8 inches (0.2032m) squared x 2 inches (0.0508m). In m3, that is 0.0020975 cubic metres, times 520 Kg/m3, equals a dried weight of the blank of 1.1KG, If you weigh it as it is, it will probably be around 1.5 kg. Target weight to turn it should be around 1.2kg or less.
0.3 of a kg of water is near enough half a pint of water, and if that can be done successfully in a microwave I'm the pope.
Would be interested in the statistics if you chose to give it a go, weigh it first, sticky it in the micky, time it and weigh it and record it and see what happens.
As you may have gathered, I am not a believer, microwaves aren't that clever for cooking and as for wood drying they fail even more spectacularly.
(Figures here are for a 8 x 8 x 2 square blank, if its round let me know and ill redo the calcs)
