A microwave vacuum (MW/V) dryer was developed for drying short roundwoods, from which woodcraft souvenirs in Korean market are mostly made, and which were hardly dried without defects in a conventional kiln. It consisted of three 1.5 kW magnetrons of 2,450 MHz, a vacuum pump, a load cell of 100 kg and a cavity of $580{ imes}580{ imes}1,360;mm^3$. A computer program was developed to switch on or off the magnetrons according to drying schedules, those were based on microwave injection time or the average of wood temperatures. To evaluate the new MW/V dryer the roundwood specimens of rigida pine, poplar and birch were dried. Their log diameters and lengths ranged from 125 to 25 em and from 25 to 50 cm, respectively. In spite of the presence of minor drying defects, the MW/V drying is found to be an effective method for drying short roundwoods. Wooden turneries made of red alder and ash logs were also MW/V dried from green to 4%MC without any degradation. The rates of the MW/V drying were examined for three different lengths of poplar logs.