There’s an article in our local paper about wood which bends once cut (and so isn’t suitable for furniture-making). It’s in French but as it might be of interest to some, I’ve translated paragraphs 3 & 4:
In previous articles, I frequently mentioned wood from trees which have been bent by the prevailing wind or by their position on the slope of a mountain are, for certain, full of tension which will be released as soon as their are sawn. You can detect these trees by the shape of their trunks. If the trunk is straight and even, and the crown is also even, there’s a good chance that the wood fibres of this tree will be regular. If, on the other hand, the trunk is curved and the crown is much more developed on one side than on the other, it will give wood which contains tension which will be released when sawn.
The tension may cause spring-back effects when sawn. Even if you straighten the boards by planing, the tension will remain in the board and will tend to move despite any corrective measures.
Furniture or pipes… no matter. All wood will destress leaving you in distress if you don’t over size your pieces and allow ample wait time for the wood to change (hopefully) to it’s final shape before milling/turning to the size needed. Agreed (with the author) some wood is totally unusable for anything other fire-wood.
Acceptable tolerances for high-quality furniture aren’t (or shouldn’t be) any less than musical instruments, especially when you are working with long pieces.
The instrument makers I know of buy seasoned lumber and mark the date received. They stage operations according to the age, keeping as much inventory as financially practical. Naturally, in pipemaking the best pieces get used for chanters.
Recently, the company I work for did a window sill in a single piece of rift-cut oak. Unfortunately, the grain on the front edge ‘zig-zagged’ a bit and the client rejected it. Explaining the nature of wood and pointing out the changed grain was where a branch was forming only annoyed the guy. He insisted we find another board ‘where there are no branches’ and use that for his window sill.
There’s been discussion in the past about boxwood chanters bending. I thought it was interesting that the problem isn’t limited to boxwood. I thought it was also interesting that the author, who teaches furniture making, thinks that if the wood grows in a certain way, it will never yield straight boards.
MTGuru - there’s a strong tradition of woodcrafts here (considering we have so much of it).
yes pj it is indeed a very interesting topic .
we dont need the kind of input that rory is often making.
along with a few other members it is of no use to anyone
In last february I went on vacation to the center-north of my country, it´s a lake/valley/mounts zone and at one of the excursions we made, the guide, as we were watching the landscape, pointed out that there were many wild naturally grown ellioti pines that weren´t useful for furniture or any comercial matter, the ones for that use were planted on plain soil and at a certain distance from one to another.
PJ´s article expained me the reasons why.
