Oaking Question

I'm going to start another Dragon Blood soon. I'm going with double fruit this time and many have stated that adding some oak chips improves flavor. Two questions 1) The bag of oak chips from the local wine shop says to soak in water 1 hr before adding. No other instructions. I'm assuming that the water gets discarded....but not sure. 2) When is the best time to add the chips? The kits I have made for years, the chips get added at start into the primary and then discarded at first racking (usually 1 week later). Reading the DB thread, many of you are adding the oak into the secondary after stabilization. This is my first run with oak on a non-kit wine. Not sure how much to use or how long to oak for. The package is LD Carlson, French oak Chips (med toast), 4 oz. Ideas?

I've seen many comments that oak in the primary help with tannins and good color - less so with oak flavor.

Oak in the secondary is more for flavor and you generally want it to sit for eight weeks (?) for full extraction - tasting as it goes so you can pull it out early if you want. Then let it sit for a year to integrate the flavor.

This goes against the dragon blood being a quick turn around but you can still drink it early - I will add some into pri/sec and see how it goes.

Cheers!
-jb

Does oaking DB work? (produce something drinkable?) I know there are some types of wine that don't oak well.

I've had DB but never with oak.

From reading the VERY lengthy Dragon Blood thread, several said they had tried oaking DB, including Danger Dave himself. What I'm looking for is results (hopefully some favorable) from people that have tried and exactly what they did to achieve those results. Please share your oaking experiences with either DB or other wines. If the majority of responses is to "not" oak this type of wine I won't. I'm learnin!