Greetings, all. I was in the "lurking" phase before joining this group because I am retired now and have vague ideas about finishing my basement. I intended to wait a few weeks before exposing myself here, to learn the vocabulary and group norms. (& outspoken personalities, etc.)
But I just could not resist the idea that came into my head about using magnetic resonance imaging to measure water content in wood. Of course, not very many people have a few million dollars to spare, a workshop with a few hundred cubic meters of spare space, and a few kilowatts of spare fusebox capacity.
Then it struck me like a cartoon "light bulb" balloon. You don't need to do MRI! You can do molecular microwave resonance measurements using a microwave oven, which is already tuned for the water molecule.
All you need to do is put a fixed quantity of water at a known temperature (i.e. exacly 100 ml of water at exactly 0 C) along with your piece of wood.
Then you fire up the oven for a fixed time, (i.e. exacly 100 seconds) and measure the resultant temperature of the water. If you know the effective power of your magnetron[1], you should be able to easily calculate the fraction of the total water content in the oven as it is divided between your wood piece and the container with the liquid water.
If you are worried about damaging the wood, just use a smaller time period. The result will be less accurate of course.
[1] You can calculate it just by seeing how long it takes to boil the water when there is no wood in the oven.