That's an interesting point - seems consistent with Adam W.'s comment "The trouble with todays merchant timber is that it is grown too fast and cut too early."
How can I order wood which won't warp?
- Thread starter mrodent
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That's an interesting point - seems consistent with Adam W.'s comment "The trouble with todays merchant timber is that it is grown too fast and cut too early."
Ha! Inexperienced doesn't mean young, unfortunately! I certainly agree that you have to be critical watching Youboob and try to understand (or guess) the motivations of the presenters.
Terminology-wise, my understanding so far is that a jointer and a planer are not the same thing, and it would lead to quite a bit of confusion if, in the UK, we call them the same thing. Today I watched what is a jointer and flatten without a jointer. One thing I won't be buying is a jointer, of that I can be pretty sure. But the latter vid shows that with a planer/thicknesser it is not necessarily beyond the wit of humankind to flatten without a jointer some board which has bowed horribly.
Six inch nail will stop a lot of twisting
I can believe that, yes. Not sure at which point of the process you're advocating such an "intervention"
.There was an earlier post where one poster says to stack freshly delivered boards attaching them to each other with cleats and put a big weight on top... to try to prevent movement during acclimatisation. I.e. to show the timber who's the boss.
I have a suspicion that if I had nailed 6 inch nails into my parana pine bookcase as I was building it the wood would just have laughed at me, and bowed, twisted and warped anyway, resulting ultimately in splits.
Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
I should have said in my earlier "definitions that you gents also call a jointer a surfacer. This being a British forum will bring some ire if you speak Americanish too much.
I couldn't live without a jointer as I think it is indispensable. You will understand the day you want to prepare wood to make a dining room table or some other big project.
I'm pretty sure when cleats were mentioned they were referring to what would be called stickers here and probably the same where you are but I'll sit corrected if wrong. They are slats of wood spaced across the stack down the length of that stack of wood to allow air to circulate on both sides of the boards. Each layer getting another set of stickers aligned with the ones under until the stack is completed. With wood you bring home you might make a stack a couple boards wide on top of a bench several layers high, stickers placed every foot or two down the length. Then place bricks, cement blocks, your anvil collection on top to hold them. It is to allow the air to flow through the stack acclimating to your shop for a week or two or more. Some would place them in the house as it might be drier and the finished piece will end up there anyway. You aren't so much trying to force your will on them as you are letting it dry evenly without stress. I suggest you don't stack directly on the floor. Better at least have 6"x6" to start the stack on especially if concrete.
Pete
I couldn't live without a jointer as I think it is indispensable. You will understand the day you want to prepare wood to make a dining room table or some other big project.
I'm pretty sure when cleats were mentioned they were referring to what would be called stickers here and probably the same where you are but I'll sit corrected if wrong. They are slats of wood spaced across the stack down the length of that stack of wood to allow air to circulate on both sides of the boards. Each layer getting another set of stickers aligned with the ones under until the stack is completed. With wood you bring home you might make a stack a couple boards wide on top of a bench several layers high, stickers placed every foot or two down the length. Then place bricks, cement blocks, your anvil collection on top to hold them. It is to allow the air to flow through the stack acclimating to your shop for a week or two or more. Some would place them in the house as it might be drier and the finished piece will end up there anyway. You aren't so much trying to force your will on them as you are letting it dry evenly without stress. I suggest you don't stack directly on the floor. Better at least have 6"x6" to start the stack on especially if concrete.
Pete
Adam W.
A Major Clanger
There's also rift sawn timber which is supposed to be the most dimensionally stable form of sawing, romoured to be even better than quatersawn, but it doesn't have the figuring seen in riven or quatersawn timber, which is highly prized in species such as oak.
Generally the engineered wood that I have seen sold as boards is blocky like a kitchen worktop, but you can also get engineered wooden doors, which have a covering of veneer, so they look like old fashioned doors (for want of a phrase), but they are much more stable and don't tend to warp or twist.
Maybe a second quality engineered oak kitchen worktop would be a good place to start, as they generally get sold off by the big stores quite cheaply.
sometimewoodworker
Established Member
your understanding of the technology is flawed.
A British planer is an American jointer they are exactly the same tool.
A British thicknesser is an American planer they are exactly the same tool.
Yes it certainly leads to confusion as the exact same name is use for different things and the same item is given a different name in the two languages.
FWIW a British jointer could conceivably be a person producing marijuana cigarettes
some might conceivably call a British planer, a surfacer though it’s not a common term.
there you are absolutely correct.
Probably the biggest confusion comes from a Brit using American language or from either one using the term from the other language without knowing the actual tool or exactly what is being referred to.
As an aside get a male yank complimenting a male Brit on their beautiful pants and the wonderful confusion could range from it being an assumption of gay intentions to a cause for assault, or comment that there was a problem with their trousers. What fun can be had with both languages!
Someone who is a neophyte but using terms from one language without the knowledge that goes with the use, will be assumed to know what they are talking about and so given answers that address that assumed knowledge.
Nobody here (I think) is going to deliberately mislead, probably virtually everyone can simplify or elaborate answers for a beginner, but again nobody is going to assume that everyone needs that and it would be insulting, not to mention tiring, to write as if there is need to explain that way
sams93
Established Member
I am sure that I read one of the replies on this thread mentioning Oakley furniture boards(although I can’t seem to find the comment now).
I have seen these crop up a few times and I always wondered what they actually are?
I have seen these crop up a few times and I always wondered what they actually are?
Shed dweller
Member
The problem is that you're looking at a natural product which will continue to react to its environmental and expecting it to suddenly stop doing that.
The way the tree grew with pressure of its own weight, wind and any other factors will put pressure into the timber which when it's cut and dried don't disappear. When you cut the boards and start planing the pieces, those pressures are released and cause twists, cupping and all the movement we don't want to imagine happening to your nice expensive wood.
Planed timber from any supplier is likely to have been processed quickly and then sold. Even if you took a rough sawn and kiln dried board and planed it yourself there's a good chance that tomorrow you'll see movement that wasn't there when you planed it.
All you can do is process the timber bit by bit. Cut it roughly to size, plane it over thickness and width and let it settle and after a while finish planing. It will never guarantee perfect boards but you're starting to give yourself more of an advantage.
Here's the scary part. Learn to plane by hand if you don't have access to a planer /thicknesser. Or plane one side by hand and use a small benchtop thicknesser to finish.
I work in a shared workshop with planing facilities and the only reason you see less twisting and warped boards these days is because the business is pushing everyone towards making things out of sheet material.
If you want to make something nice out of real wood you just have to suffer nature.
Adam W.
A Major Clanger
There seems to be some confusion about what rift sawn and true quarter sawn timber end grain looks like, this should clarify it and help you find what you are looking for when you search through a stack of boards at B&Q.
From Flexural anisotropy of rift-sawn softwood boards induced by the end-grain orientation - Journal of Wood Science
From Flexural anisotropy of rift-sawn softwood boards induced by the end-grain orientation - Journal of Wood Science
Keith Cocker
Established Member
That’s not my experience at all. I’ve used solid wood of various kinds to build bookshelves and other items of furniture without any warping problem. I built a bookcase for my wife’s study a couple of years ago using redwood. It’s 2m wide by 1.5 m tall with 6 shelves. Straight as a die still after 2 years. I built a small storage unit from Sapele 3 or 4 years ago etc etc I could go on but really my point is give it a try. I’m sure you will be successful and pleased with your efforts.
Sgian Dubh
Established Member
There's some truth in your "fraught with difficulties" comment. Wood, in common with other materials that people work with to make artefacts has unique characteristics and properties that need to be understood by the people that work it. It's not too hard to make successful solid wood bookshelves, and many other solid wood items for that matter, if you understand the material's properties, how it got from being a tree to an item you can buy at a merchant (boards, for example) and have the equipment, knowledge and skills to work it.
As you're discovering, or perhaps already realised, there's a significant learning curve to getting your head around understanding wood as a material. Much depends on how committed you are to go through the process of learning about the raw material and how to work with it successfully. There's no shame if you're not serious about getting to know the material; working with and understanding wood is not for every one. On the other hand, if you are serious my best advice is to seek out reliable and good quality information. Be wary, for example, as others have already said, about what's available on the internet, YouTube, podcasts, blogs, etc. Those outlets have, as you'd expect, the full range from widely accepted and acknowledged experts to the know-little-or-nothing wannabees spouting a mix of guesswork, flawed supposition, and horse manure, some of it dangerous. How to tell one from the other for those that don't already know the subject pretty well is, at minimum, a challenge.
So, my advice is seek out the best sources of information you can find. This forum isn't a bad place to start, but it isn't perfect, of course. Slainte.
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It's encouraging to hear you say this.
One thing which occurs to me: this original attempt at building shelves with parana pines was going to involve some pretty deep shelves, maybe 225 mm, something like that: the idea being that some hardback books simply won't fit on 150 mm shelves. I think that the wider your boards the more trouble you are probably going to have with warping, cupping, etc.
I've examined all these answers over the past 2 days and they're all incredibly useful and have given me a lot to think about. Thanks everyone.
oint that everyone is making is that there are no guarantees when it comes to working with wood lol, all you can do is reduce the chances of problems developing over time, the Oak boards from B&Q that were mentioned might do a great job & never be a problem but the company know there is potential for something to go wrong so cover themselves with what they say, the same thing could be said for Oak Boards from any source or a great many other types of wood.
If I were making a bookcase & it was going to be painted then I would be using either MDF or plywood, I don't see the point in using a nice hardwood if your then going to cover it up. I wouldn't be using 1/2 inch either, 18mm would be my choice.
What was meant by using stickers is this sort of thing, this is a piece of laburnum log that I have cut & is now air drying. I don't have a huge amount of experience doing this sort of thing so someone may say I am not doing it correctly but it will give you an idea lol
If I were making a bookcase & it was going to be painted then I would be using either MDF or plywood, I don't see the point in using a nice hardwood if your then going to cover it up. I wouldn't be using 1/2 inch either, 18mm would be my choice.
What was meant by using stickers is this sort of thing, this is a piece of laburnum log that I have cut & is now air drying. I don't have a huge amount of experience doing this sort of thing so someone may say I am not doing it correctly but it will give you an idea lol
Yojevol
Clocking on
Someone calling. They should preferably be outside getting some air flowing through,.
Brian
Unfortunately, I don't really have an outside where I can keep them lol, this is just one stack of quite a few, I buy most of my Hardwoods but things like this Laburnum they don't stock. I also have some Yew drying as well because that tends to be Price on Application & I was lucky enough to come across some a while ago.
If only there was a book that captured all of this information. Wait! There is:
https://www.classichandtools.com/cut-dried/p756
===
For those who are interested, Richard's (@Sgian Dubh) book is a great read.
profchris
Established Member
As I understand it, the confusion arises because to a sawyer the terms relate to the way they decide to saw the log, whereas woodworkers use them to describe the resulting grain orientation.
This is why I always refer to vertical grain rather than quarter-sawn. When a sawyer flat saws a log, the central slice (and maybe the slices above and below if it's a big log) will have vertical grain orientation.
Last year I went with a friend to our local lumber yard to buy a slab of maple for some drawers he was making. He wanted quarter sawn for the sides, and we found a decent center section from the stack that was about 3 meters long, 50 or 60mm thick and about 400mm wide. By the time the slab was trimmed, resawn, and milled, he would have a lifetime's supply of quarter sawn maple for drawer sides.
There was a one-meter long split on one end through the heartwood, which was not a problem since he was going to cut that section out. When the staff measured the slab in order to determine the price, they did not include the section with the split since that one-meter part was damaged.
StilwellDesigns
Established Member
short answer is you cant
