The bane of the WW hobbyist

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tarheelz

Dave
Corporate Member
... we just move too slowly.

Two weeks ago, I milled down my rough walnut down to beautiful S4S pieces, jointed, glued them up, and cut them to final length. (I'm building a very small case for my MIL to hold her cable box and Wi-Fi router.)

Returned to the garage last night to mark up the dovetails for the carcass only to discover that all my beautiful pieces are cupped or twisted.

Thought about trying to hand plane out the cups and twists (too wide now for anything mechanized) but given that they are not terribly severe, I'm now going with the "#### the Torpedoes. Full Speed Ahead" approach. With some fiddling, clamping, and lots of cussing, I'm going to turn this into a case ... or firewood.

Pray for me.
 

sawman101

Bruce Swanson
Corporate Member
I've had that happen frequently when milling thin stock. I take great pains to stack and put a little weight on the pieces I'm not using so as not to end up with cupping. Sometimes I'll take just a single piece and clamp it up against a flat surface for a day. This wouldn't work with longer pieces though; on long pieces you can rip, glue up the thinner pieces, then lightly plane to get dimension lumber that will not cup, if you carefully alternate the grain pattern.
 

Charlie Buchanan

Charlie
Corporate Member
...Or move too fast...
I found out the hard way that it is better to joint and plane 4/4 to 7/8 or so, then sticker and weight it for a couple of days in the shop before I finish milling. Let it acclimate to the new dimensions and new surfaces opened up. I want to find out if there is any cup or twist hiding in there before I glue up a panel. This is slow but it has almost eliminated wasted glue-ups for me.
 

Roy G

Roy
Senior User
Dave, when this happens to me, I clamp a piece of 1" to the cupped piece to flatten it. I keep it clamped and mark up the other piece, which is in the vise so it is flat also. When I assemble the pieces the dovetails hold the sides flat.

Roy G
 

ehpoole

Administrator
Ethan
There are two things that will cause wood to bow, twist, and cup and those are internal stresses (either in kiln drying, known as case hardening, or in the original growth conditions), known as reaction wood, and changes in the internal moisture level due to varying humidity levels in storage. There is nothing you can do or change in reaction wood, you just have to accept such boards for what they are and deal with it (sometimes it is better to cut such up into short or narrow pieces, glue back together, and then joint and plane, if such is a board you really want, or need, to use).

However, in a shop without a stable humidity level the wood towards the interior will always lag well behind the wood on the exterior with respect to changes in shop/storage humidity (as does wood towards the outer ends of a board). This means there will be a variation in the wood's moisture content at the different levels of thickness. When you suddenly remove significant wood from the outside of the board you suddenly expose the interior wood to a new humidity level it has not seen before and the wood begins either giving up moisture or absorbing such as it tries to achieve equilibrium. In such cases, the ring pattern of a board will tell the story, provided you can visualize such (it helps to view the endgrain as well as face grain patterns), but most of the expansion and contraction occurs within the planes defined by each layer of the rings and much less so between rings, which is why quartersawn wood is so much more stable, a wider ring will experience more change in width than a shorter ring as there are more cells.

It often helps to remove equal amounts of wood, during joining and planing, from each side of the board to help stabilize boards a bit by trying to ensure equal (as best as possible) stresses on each side of the board, but even such will not avoid all issues as the response is always governed by the board's unique ring and face grain patterns, but cathedral fiatsawn boards are most susceptible to such issues because of their arching ring pattern (as seen from the endgrain). In uncontrolled environments in which much wood must be removed, it is often helpful to remove no more than half to two-thirds of your intended thickness in a single day, then allow the wood a few days to several weeks to equalize a bit before removing the remaining thickness through jointing and planing to help reduce unwanted twisting, cupping, and bowing, but such only helps to reduce such, it does not fully eliminate the behavior if humidity is constantly changing in your shop.

The good news is that some of the cupping, twisting, and bowing may (or may not) subside over the span of a few weeks or months as levels equalize again, or it may actually worsen depending upon how much the internal moisture levels must change and how the wood was removed. This is one of the things that makes working in a humidity controlled shop (dehumidifier) so wonderful as, over time, all of your wood stock in the shop will eventually reach an even moisture level through and through and your cut and milled pieces will not react unpredictably due to moisture changes from one day, or month, to the next -- the lack of rusting tools is also nice, as well, and the shop environment is considerably more comfortable as well. Only reaction wood will still give you those headaches, but such is much less common than moisture issues. All of which assumes, of course, that you are storing your wood in the shop because if you bring the wood into the shop to use only on demand then its moisture will once again reflect the environment it was stored in as it can take a year, or more, per inch of thickness to fully reach equilibrium in a humidity controlled shop.
 

Jeff

New User
Jeff
Two weeks ago, I milled down my rough walnut down to beautiful S4S pieces, jointed, glued them up, and cut them to final length
.

Sorry, but I don't understand some of this.

1. Started with flat sawn rough cut walnut that was +/- 1" thick? Kiln dried or air dried and for how long before beginning? Did you measure the %MC at that time?

2. Milled to S4S and the new dimensions of those pieces were (a" x b" x c")?

3. Without further ado the pieces were glued up as panels and cut to length. Final dimensions were (L" x W" x T")? All was good and all was flat in the garage? :confused:

4. How did you store those panels before returning to the scene of the crime 2 weeks later? Were they stickered & stacked and still got ornery? :icon_scra

Just trying to understand when things went south in the process.
 

tarheelz

Dave
Corporate Member
See below...

.

Sorry, but I don't understand some of this.

1. Started with flat sawn rough cut walnut that was +/- 1" thick? Kiln dried or air dried and for how long before beginning? Did you measure the %MC at that time? Yes. I did not check MC but I took these from older stock from the back of Klingspors. They acclimated to the garage for about two weeks before I got to cuttin'.

2. Milled to S4S and the new dimensions of those pieces were (a" x b" x c")? Thickness was 7/8" and widths were about 8". This got them flat. I then let them sit two days to see what would happen. A little but not much movement noticed.

3. Without further ado the pieces were glued up as panels and cut to length. Final dimensions were (L" x W" x T")? All was good and all was flat in the garage? :confused: Pieces were planed down to 3/4" (both sides back and forth). They pieces were glued up in to roughly 15" wide panels. I then ripped and cross cut them down to assembly size. Widths in the 13" range. Lengths around 16" or so. Left everything in a stack on the table saw.

Two weeks pass in the garage.

4. How did you store those panels before returning to the scene of the crime 2 weeks later? Were they stickered & stacked and still got ornery? :icon_scra I just left them in a flat stack. No stickering. Oops.

Just trying to understand when things went south in the process.
 

scsmith42

New User
Scott Smith
As you probably figured out, your mistake was to leave them flat stacked and not stickered after planing/glue up. Charlie and Ethan both have good explanations regarding why and proper procedures to minimize this from happening.

It's happened to all of us at one time or another.

Best of success to you going forward!

Scott
 

pviser

New User
paul
I definitely agree with Charlie and others that the final dimensions should be approached slowly in two or more steps, each separated by days or even weeks. Let the wood move and simply remill at each step.
 

SubGuy

Administrator
Zach
Wood moves. It's part of the game. They might come back if you sticker them and put some weight on top. I've saved a few projects like that.
 

JimD

Jim
Senior User
I don't think I've ever glued up a large solid wood panel and had it end up really flat. I haven't done it on my new Paulk style workbench yet and hope I can clamp it down to the flat surface and do better. But I always end up making my projects with the less than flat glue ups. It adds some complexity but is very doable. Even my plywood tends not to stay really flat. Once I would like to work with flat panels.
 
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