But I have always done it that way!

[Just4Fun]

I'm sure we all do things in particular ways that we would struggle to justify if asked. Maybe because that is the way we learned, or we get into certain habbits, or it is conventional wisdom (even if an old wives' tale). I was thinking about this when selecting timber for my next project.

Basically I need some boards about 150mm wide. I have some boards that are about 200 mm wide so I could just rip them down, but then I would be using the pith. I usually avoid that because ... I have always done it that way. I just don't know why. Presumably I was taught that or read it somewhere but I don't recall the source and now it is just a habbit.

To eliminate the pith I have to make a rip cut either side of the pith then edge joint and laminate the 2 edge pieces. That is obviously a lot of work (especially as I do hand work) so I wonder what would happen if I used the pith. Would the sky fall? What about folks who use better wood? The wood I use is bland white wood and matching the grain is rarely an issue but with other material cutting bits out of the middle could be problematic.

More generally, what do other people do for reasons they either never knew or have forgotten?

 

[clogs]

I always thought the pith was bad stuff and to be avoided except perhaps turning when a colour difference might add to the project....

 

[Adam W.]

The pith, and the next seven or more growth rings are full of low grade and tough fibrous wood with interlocking grain, which the sapling laid down when it was reaching for the sky. It contains lots of diagonal or sloping grain, which makes the sapling flexible enough to withstand wind and snow loading.

This juvenile wood is tough to work and is generally regarded as firewood. The pith in the middle is soft and spongy, which is why it doesn't work or finish well.

That's pretty much the reason why it's normally discarded.

 

[johnnyb]

always an issue on redwood as it splits also it nearly always contains some in 3inch an 4inch baulks. other species less bothersome

 

[Bojam]

More generally, what do other people do for reasons they either never knew or have forgotten?

I was reading Peter Korn's excellent book - Why we make things & why it matters: the education of a craftsman - yesterday and in it he recounts an amusing anedote:

My father tells a story about a woman preparing pot roast for a family gathering. When her husband asks why she cuts the brisket in half and cooks it in two separate pans, she answers "Because that's how my mother did it". That evening, at dinner, the husband asks his mother-in-law why cooking in two pans makes the brisket better. "Sonny", she replies, "I just didn't have a pan big enough to hold a whole roast."

Korn goes on to explain that when he started teaching woodworking to interior design students for the first time, it involved communicating about process, design and aesthetics, which required him to translate the tacit knowledge he had accumulated through years of practice into the conscious realm of language. He says that "When I began to articulate the furniture making process for my students, I discovered that a lot of my methods and assumptions were like that pot roast - things I did because they worked, without understanding why." It was only through teaching, he says, that he began to question his methods and implicit assumptions and to engage in woodworking as a science as well as an art.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Furniture design? I took an Ideal Homes Exhibition booklet to my woodwork master in 1971. He looked through it carefully and said read it carefully - just about everything you should never do is in there.

 

[Jacob]

I'm sure we all do things in particular ways that we would struggle to justify if asked. Maybe because that is the way we learned, or we get into certain habbits, or it is conventional wisdom (even if an old wives' tale). I was thinking about this when selecting timber for my next project.

Basically I need some boards about 150mm wide. I have some boards that are about 200 mm wide so I could just rip them down, but then I would be using the pith. I usually avoid that because ... I have always done it that way. I just don't know why. Presumably I was taught that or read it somewhere but I don't recall the source and now it is just a habbit.

To eliminate the pith I have to make a rip cut either side of the pith then edge joint and laminate the 2 edge pieces. That is obviously a lot of work (especially as I do hand work) so I wonder what would happen if I used the pith. Would the sky fall? What about folks who use better wood? The wood I use is bland white wood and matching the grain is rarely an issue but with other material cutting bits out of the middle could be problematic.

More generally, what do other people do for reasons they either never knew or have forgotten?

Depends what you are making with the boards.
If you look behind or underneath a lot of good quality old furniture you will find every fault under the sun, unfinished rough surfaces or worse. It's only the bits you normally see that matter.
In fact things done perfectly behind and out of sight is sometimes the sign of over enthusiastic amateur work.