On 04.03.16 15:14, Gene Heskett wrote: > On Friday 04 March 2016 14:12:22 John Kasunich wrote: > > If your wood is below 5%, it might be too late.
That's damn dry. Air-dried is generally 12 - 14%, and "A moisture content of 6 to 8% is usually recommended for furniture manufacture in most northern and central regions of the United States." according to Bruce Hoadley, in Fine Woodworking's "On Wood and How to Dry It" > I am fairly sure its too late to fix it. The unfunny part is that when > carried in the door and laid on the strip of rug I'd laid out, it was > saran wrapped, dead straight and flat. But the instant I cut the saran > wrap off the top bundle, it turned into a bristle cone pine on a rock > overlooking the pacific, twisting every which way it had room to twist. > these lids, which are 2 ea 44" long pieces of 1x12 biscuited together > for the width needed, have a wind in all 3 once they'd had a chance to > acclimate to my 73F,20% humidity garage for a week. Worst case is 4"! That sounds to me like you've copped a load of reaction wood, i.e. wood cut from a leaning tree or, worse, a branch. Wood grown under tension or compression will warp once cut up, to release the tension. But even good wood, if green, needs to be air-dried flat with weights or clamping, just to tell it what's required. There's not much about it in the book, but in my experience, young growth timber, especially if rapidly grown with plenty of water, will also warp and split to a degree which is not seen in old growth wood. I see that the ratio of tangential to radial shrinkage for mahogany is 1.4, which is pretty average, but enough to lead to cupping in backsawn boards. Backsawn will give better figure, whereas quartersawn is more stable. (It might have saved you, if Murphy had been looking the other way.) A good carpenter or cabinetmaker can rescue quite a few medium disasters which would trounce anyone else, but that's hard with wood from hell. The one opportunity to catch this one was the moment the boards sat up and snarled. You tried that, and they wouldn't give. Maybe steaming would have worked before they dried. It would be interesting to know, but that's overboard on a transatlantic steamer, now, and you can't even see the lights in the distance. It's depressing to try to work with a sow's ear. It's worth making completion of the job a joy, with new stable well-dried wood, I think. (I don't know if this saying is Aussie or international: "You can't make strawberry jam out of pigshit.) If the crap wood can be taken back, then good. If not, whatever. Enjoy the good wood. (And a beer when it's done. It'll be beer weather by then, by definition. :-) Erik ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
