Wood has a tendency to shrink during drying. This creates stress within the wood. The present paper deals with the effect of moisture distribution on the normal stress along the direction of board width, based on the equation (3) in the text which had been derived previously from the assumption of superposition of unsteady creep compliances during drying. The stress apparently increases with increasing moisture gradient and its development greatly depends on the progress of moisture gradient. These results suggest that some of the known types of stress developments during drying can be derived from appropriate combinations of these two factors.