[Woodworkers] Christmas present help needed!!

[Clint Warren]

So 2x4’s would be 17-19% (but maybe much higher). Do you know what MC wood in your shop naturally gets to? Maybe boards were case hardened (don’t think this is really the right term). Outside really dry and center wetter. Every time you plane and let it sit the warping scenario is reproduced as it dries out unevenly?  Maybe have the boards sit in the shop for much longer before first milling. Just spit balling, not sure.

A thought. You mentioned rustic. Any chance cedar would work? HD has cedar ¾” cedar boards. I’ve used them on some rustic projects (picture frame, bird feeders) and they seemed to be very dry.

clint

Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10

________________________________
From: Woodworkers <woodworkers-bounces at lists.sawdusters.org> on behalf of Chuck Steger via Woodworkers <woodworkers at lists.sawdusters.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 17, 2017 12:13:06 PM
To: A place where woodworkers talk about woodworking
Cc: Chuck Steger
Subject: [Woodworkers] Christmas present help needed!!

A little long but please read as I need help!

I’m making a photo board for my granddaughter (believe it or not they are actually printing pictures and the Polaroid is making a comeback). She likes rustic so I was going to make it out of pine (knots and all) and put a barn wood finish on it. Since it was going to be rustic, I figured I could skip a milling step and purchase 1x4 boards at Lowe’s. Most were badly warped but I found 3 - 10’ boards that were relatively straight. I thought that since they acclimated in the store, they should be good to go. Plus I was going to chop up into 2’ lengths so I could manage the warp. I set them aside in my climate controlled shop and went to finish the concrete truck for my grandson. When I went to retrieve the boards, they had warped badly. I knew better but I used them thinking I could force them straight at glue up. When I went to clamp them up, my heart-of-hearts knew it wasn’t going to work because they were warping at glue up. I had gone this far so I glued up, clamped down to a flat work bench and hoped for the best. Sure enough, when I removed the clamps, the panel was badly warped (unfortunately, I was not surprised).

I realized I should have done what I planned to do in the first place and go get 2x4’s so I could mill the warp out. I got pretty straight 2x4’s and chopped into 2’ sections and ,milled down to 1 ¼”. I stickered on my bench and let acclimate to shop for a day. Encouraging because as you looked at the stickered stack, they did not appear to be warping at all. So next day I milled down to just under 7/8” and stickered again overnight. Again stack looked good so I milled to final thickness of ¾’. As I was gluing up, I was very encouraged as the glue up was flat. No need to clamp to bench (I did anyway) but was very encouraged. Yesterday morning I unclamped and held my breath but, hooray, a flat panel. I sanded panel to remove glue marks and set aside to practice texturing sample boards for the barn wood finish (still nice and flat). This morning, I went into the shop and the panel was warped!! As I write this, I clamped the board flat to my bench and started to bring the temperature up in my shop. If I’m not working on anything, when I leave the shop for the night, I hold temp to 50 degrees but if I’m working on something, I hold temp to 61. Why 61? Because I bring up temp in 3 degree increments to get to 70. Why 3 degrees? I don’t know, I just do.

So I have questions: What happened? Is it the temperature fluctuations (and does 9 degrees really make a difference in warping)? But most importantly, what do I do now? I have less than a week to finish. I could do again with new 2x4’s but I’m not comfortable I wouldn’t have the same issue. As I send this I’m going back out to unclamp from the bench but I don’t expect it to stay flat.

Chuck

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sawdusters.org/pipermail/woodworkers-sawdusters.org/attachments/20171217/e529f554/attachment.html>