All ,
What ways have you learned to read / tame our wicked medium .
Can you anticipate which direction to feed , plane or joint a given board ? If so how do you determine this ?
Which boards get used for panels and which get used for faces and doors ?
Using the right board for the right place is an art , sometimes just a lot of patience maybe . Grain , color , flatness and cup and crook wind and warp are just some of my daily opponents . Careful attention to detail can prevent many a disasters , tear out rip , cracking and splitting
Ultimately I think selection of the grain makes the craftsmen
On some species I can almost just look and feel the board to observe any exterior stresses .
dusty
Replies
Dusty, that is a fine question that I am sure plenty of folks would like a nice concise answer to. Unfortunately, it really takes a book or two to answer, along with more than a few years of experience to test whether you understood what you have read.
You worded your question so well that I suspect that you already know the answer to parts of the question that you ask. Or do you just keep running into these problems, without really figuring them out?
Rather than trying to answer any part of this question, I will suggest that you get and study R Bruce Hoadley's "Understanding Wood". It is very well illustrated, and most of the information about a subject which can be very hard to understand the dynamics of has been pared down to the simplest level for the layman to understand, yet it contains plenty of information that takes many years to understand, or absorb for those diligent at finding the answers to those mysteries. That is to say, study the charts of the properties.
Beyond that, if you start harvesting the wood from the tree, or by harvesting the whole tree, then take this wood through the whole process from log to delivery of the finished work. You will gain and build even more than you will likely learn from the books just using lumber from the supplier. The things that you find in the wood will have more relationship to the life, or history of the tree, which would otherwise be a nebulous cloud out of context otherwise.
If you want a more specific answer than this, I would suggest that you post photos which show what you have made, along with what has happened since, and ask specific questions pertaining to those items and problems. You will get a whole slew of answers here. It is then your task to sort out which of those are actually right and which seem like they might be right.
I hope this helps, although I doubt it has. ha, K
Root ,
After 30 some years I am better at reading the boards then ever before and I know how I do it , but was wondering how you and others do it ? Do we look for the same things that will tip us off to how the particular stick wants to be treated ?
I do not keep running into the same old problems , unless we consider the very individual nature of wood as a problem in itself . I can machine a stack of 101 parts and all is well until the 79th piece and it just wants to blow out or split or crack , surprise .
When planing or jointing by hand or machine I start with a light pass or cut , observe the chipout or how the surface reacted and then either continue or change the direction of or rate of feed .
Some boards want to be moved slow some faster , some hardly at all .
All the books and sources in the world can be great guide lines but will not equal the hands on experience and on the job training we get from doing . The books can lead a person in the right direction and give you a bit of insight without ever working a board but in no way should be thought of as experience imho .
dusty " knowledge without experience is simply information "
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