bought a couple of lifts of cherry which has pieces 4″ to 12″ 8% mc
I was wondering if it is better to use glued up pieces for raised panel doors or would the wider boards work best all boards are 9′ long
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Replies
Dude,
I glued a table top up out of 4 pieces of 9" wide cherry. Not bad, but could have been much better. I strongly recommend gluing up out of maybe 3" or 4" wide pieces. Alternate the growth rings, and most importantly, let it sit after glue up for a few days or maybe a week where the air can circulate all the way around the panels. If it is going to warp or bow, it will usually do it within a few days or so. Then if it does, you can possibly find someone with a wide belt sander to flatten it for you. Just my $.02
M/M
I 2nd what Mapleman says.
Plus, if your finished panels won't be wider than your planer, then edge joint the rough boards and glue them up rough. After a few days of letting them adjust, then plane them out to desired thickness. Also, cherry is bad about glue creep when using the yellow pva glues. Get that stuff (a powder) that you mix with water. It has a longer set time too. Yellow glue sets to durn quick, especially in the summer.
PlaneWood by Mike_in_Katy (maker of fine sawdust!)PlaneWood
Productionn shops use narrow pieces.
Custom shops use wide pieces.
Dude,
consider the visual composition of each door the panel will occupy. For example, a 6"wide panel should be one piece; a 10 "wide should be 2 pieces; a 14" should be three and so forth. Lay out all the narrow boards together and place them thoughtfully in the most visually pleasing format, bearing in mind which doors are adjacent to which. The finished panel need not be perfectly flat, but it will make your life a whole lot easier if its close. A warped panel with and arched end will need to be either routed (limiting the depth of the raise), or flattened in a rigid jig to pass thru the shaper. A square panel with a cup to it can be put thru the shaper successfully with a power feeder. Remember, you can vary the widths of the pieces within the panel for pleasing effect, Such as a wide center piece with a narrower piece on each side.
Good Luck!
Dude,
I would think it would come down to a matter of personal taste. Are you looking to show off a beautiful grain pattern which would be accomplished best by a wide board or just fillling the void between the stail and rails. I beleive the last issue of Woodworkers News had an article on this. Thinner pieces may provide more stability but will they provide the look you want.
Either way enjoy what you do!
Clem
- Sorry, the article is in the September issue of Woodshop News not Woodworkers News.
Edited 8/28/2005 7:56 am ET by clem
I've heard from people that I trust, and read in FWW, that the alternating-ring-glue-up is unnesarry. Ive made a lot of smaller panels (up to 14") and I aranged the boards the way that looked best regaurdless of the growth rings. No problems.
I wonder what the gods of wwing do? Some how I doubt Maloof would compromise the flow of the grain over that.
Mike
thanks to all who have replied
The reason i asked the question was that i have a decent selection to work from for a change (1000 bd ft @ 8%) unlike my past projects
One other question , is it worth stickering 8% mc lumber if you are just keeping it for stock ,the material is in various thickness 1" ,2", 4x4, 6x6 all 8'
Dude,
The wood was at 8% moisture content only on the day you checked it. Since then it will have gained and lost moisture with changes in the weather.
The point to stickering is to keep all the stock at the same moisture content and fairly close to its equilibrium point with the current humidity. If you don't sticker, there is a risk that some boards will be wetter or drier than others and will be moving around as you try to work with them.
John W.
About stickering, John is correct. I am by nature a pretty lazy guy, and have a bad habit of not stickering properly kiln dried lumber. It ends up causing the boards to cup and bow (mostly the boards on the top and bottom of the stack). The face exposed to air will gain or loose moisture while the other face will react much more slowly. But I live in Texas and the humidity here changes drasticly overnight and regularly. So if you live in Arizona there may not be much of a problem.
Mike
I stickered all the boards using 7/8 stickers at 16" oc & spaced the boards about 1" apart
The 2 lifts i bought came from 2 30" cherry trees a rather unually large tree in this area
As for the moisture content i have checked them daily and they are staying relatively stable even though it rained heavily here the other day
I would like to thank all for their helpful comments.
dude,
I would favor the single wide panels. You won't have to worry about grain or color match. I always try to use the widest pieces I can find for situations like yours.
As long as the wood is stable, no internal drying stresses, I would not hesitate to use the wide boards. Consider yourself fortunate to have such wonderful stock to choose from.
Once you begin milling, after the initial jointing and planing, let it sit a couple of days. You will be able to tell rather quickly once you start milling if the wood will be tough to work with.
Besides, if you aren't going to use the wide pieces I certainly will ! ; )
J.P.
Flatsawn boards, no matter what the current moisture content, will cup with changes in relative humidity. One of the primary reasons for building a frame and panel door is that the frame will stay straight even if the panel does cup thus allowing you to use wide boards for the panels without risk.
For the frames of the doors, you should use the straightest, most even grained, quarter sawn wood to minimize the chance of the frames being affected by humidity changes.
John W.
JohnWW,I hate to disagree with your last statement ("One of the primary reasons for building a frame and panel door is that the frame will stay straight even if the panel does cup thus allowing you to use wide boards for the panels without risk."), but I have to. Building a frame and panel door has nothing to do with cupping of the panel. Cupping from the panel will still cause problems with your door.The main reason for a frame and panel door is that it will maintain it's outer dimensions dispite the swelling and shrinking of the panel. This makes an inset door much easier to maintain over time. That being said, I would lean towards gluing up panels larger than 8" wide. A glued panel with alternating growth rings will always be more stable than a single board.Tim
I have been building frame and panel doors for close to 30 years and what I do on raised panels is use the most pleasing panel wide or narrow , if glued up always try from the same board . I run my cabinet door panels down to about 9/16"- 5/8" , I do not wait on purpose for the panels to move . Assuming the wood is properly dry , I get that panel into a frame asap . True the panel shrinks and grows as it floats in the frame , but I have never had a door frame warp caused from the panel . Sometimes the stiles may not be perfectly flat but they don't generally change .One benefit of frame and panel construction is stability . There are always exceptions to every rule but on the last thousand or so I have made , no warping occurred caused from the panels .
regards dusty
I specifically said that dealing with the cupping of the panels was "One of the primary reasons for building frame and panel doors", I quite clearly said it wasn't the only reason.
Frame and panel doors have several structural and design advantages, dealing with the panel's cupping is only one of them, you described a second advantage, but there are still others.
Second, unless a panel develops a severe cup or twist, which it shouldn't if the stock is properly chosen, the cupping of the panel won't affect the stability of a well made frame. I regularly build frame and panel doors with panels made from a single flatsawn wide board, and I have had no problems with the doors staying flat.
Gluing up a panel with alternating growth rings is a good strategy for certain applications, but I prefer, where possible, to use a single board for panels to have an unbroken grain pattern on the panel.
The practical limit to how wide a panel can be is generally dictated by how much expansion and contraction the grooves in the frame can handle.
John W.
LOL,
"One of the primary reasons for building frame and panel doors"
I saw that one comming... You know that I would have been busting your balls over that if he hadn't. Heh heh.
Hows the weather in Katy today? Weve had a nice break today, I actually opened the doors at home this morning to cool off the house!
Mike
I specifically said that dealing with the cupping of the panels was "One of the primary reasons for building frame and panel doors", I quite clearly said it wasn't the only reason. Geeee ya get so UPSET! I love your posts! Hang in there.. I for one love it!
John,
...flat sawn boards, no matter what the current mc will cup with changes in RH".
I don't believe that statement is set in stone, not at all. In theory, this is true, because of the shape and orientation of the growth rings, but in practice doesn't always happen, especially when the growth rings are virtually straight lines across the board -beware of absolute statements, particularly in woodworking matters....
However, when I am working with wide flat sawn boards I do not give them the benefit of doubt-always keep them stickered while they wait for the next step.
When you talk of doors, do you mean big doors as in house doors? For the usual cabinet doors I don't worry about the frame pieces not being q/s-but I don't mix q/s and f/s in the same frame.Philip Marcou
phillip ,
" beware of absolute statements , particularly in woodworking matters "
Or in many other subjects as well . I enjoy yours as well as JohnWWs posts but I think many of us , with myself at the top of the list are guilty of thinking our way is the only and best right way . Sure there are a few standard hard and fast rules if you will , really more like common sense (like don't thin your titebond with water) but in general , I like to think there are few or no real rules especially in designs and methods and different approaches to the same tasks . One philosophy I do subscribe to is that in general if properly dried Q sawn lumber tends to be more stable as a rule , (oops) . Many antiques especially tables tops were made of glued up Q sawn and to this day have stayed flat . I have made many F&P doors out of Q sawn as well as flat sawn and really in an average stile say 2 1/2" to 3" how much cupping can occur ?
good day dusty
Dusty,
I suppose another way of putting it is to say "There are a lot less hard and fast rules in practice than in theory". Plenty of mythology. And doublespeaks e.g "you must at all times without exception glue up yer table tops by alternating the growth ring orientation"....and in the next book "mind to orientate the growth rings all the same way, so that the table top cups in a graceful arch, instead of resembling a corrugated iron roof sheet".....
Well, if I am to be forced top apply either one of those "rules" it will be the second :because when you attach the top it will be pulled down from the middle, meaning the ends are good and tight against the table frame. But I don't really like either-I prefer to join up the top so it looks right, and use more or less buttons etc for attachment i.e a "wavey" top will need more buttons or z clips etc.
I try to avoid mixing q/s and f/s on the same frame :when a q/s rail butts to a f/s stile the chances are that there will sooner or later be a small but very visible step there.As you say, cupping is not an issue.Philip Marcou
Sam Maloof says forget the rings, glue em up the way they look best.
dude,
God made us wide boards and clutzs need to make them smaller to deal with them..
Wide is fine! Just remember to make the grooves deep enough to cover the swelling that happens when things get damp or the humidity goes up.. If every thing is dry as toast (er, 7% mc or so) then the panel should rattle in the rails and styles.
I have this wonderfull Stickly mahogany head board that is made from pieces of 14 inch wide mahogany. it's nearly a decade old and it hasn't warped at all... I made some glued up boards that were less than three inches wide and I had to plane it to less than 3/8ths thick after the glue up to deal with the warping effect of glueing it together..
The pictures I posted earlier of wide fiddleback maple that were over 12 inches wide have warped at all since I installed them nor has the ceiling which is made from 15 inch wide pieces with nothing more than a few bisquits holding everything together and that's inspite of it raining directly on the ceiling a month ago when the roof was off and my tarps leaked..
Frenchy,
Panels are not supposed to rattle in the rails, when the rails are taking the end grain of the panels-there is only need for a token gesture of clearance there.
In fact , there is no need for rattling at all, especially on bed applications. One leaves sufficient clearance in the grooves of the stiles by adjusting the width of the panel, while it's thickness is a "nice" fit-not a rattler.
Sounds like you were mighty lucky with that ceiling-if the water had sat there long enough.....
See what I mean when I say you guys are spoilt with all the timber under the sun-I mean, really, making ceilings from 15" wide boards of Maple?<G>
Er, just for fun, how come you "made some glued up boards that were less than 3" wide? <G>Philip Marcou
philip,
OK technically they weren't rattling, they were simply loose enough to rattle. Now after recent rains and high humidity they are nice and tight.. This winter during the heating season they will get loose again..
If you allow for wood swelling and plan for it the wood will safely swell and shrink and be in great shape hundreds of years from now..
Go look at the original furniture and such from before the American revolution.. you'll see big wide solid boards.
Ya caught me! I did those glue ups back before I found out how cheap wood could be obtained directly from a sawmill. I used to take apart pallets and such and that was my primary source of wood.. I used an old Stanley hand plane or simply sanded it smooth with a belt sander. Now maybe I could blame it on my inexperiance or poor technique but I never did figure out why a glued up board is better than a solid board.. please don't tell me that it doesn't swell as much when it absorbs moisture.. If you make a 12 inch wide glued up board out of 1/8th inch sticks (just to carry this discussion to an extreme) and you put it in a damp room it will swell about the same as a solid wide board will.. The top of the desk I'm typing this on is made from three pieces of pine each about 12 inches wide it's about 31 years old and has been thru all sorts of heck and it's still flat..
I suppose with your comment about 15 inch wide boards you'd hate me if I told you that I can easily get 22 inch wide boards and there is a sawmill nearby that has the ability to saw 48 inch wide boards.. . Now a lot of time those wider boards (48) are sawn thru and thru but I have seen them made from quatersawn wood, yep! it's not all that uncommon to have a six, seven, or even 8 foot tree foot tree. Sawmills hate them because there tends to be sooo much waste as they nibble around the edges. It takes ten times as long to deal with them because of all the turning and waste generated..
Pictures from the past show giant trees that cars can actually drive thru so I suppose our hardwoods aren't really all that big..
frenchy,I think too many people have seen Norm on the TV talking about gluing up panels and alternating growth rings that it has become the mantra of woodworkers nationwide. I think big boards are great. I feel that if they are dried properly you shouldn't have to worry about cupping as long as you design for wood movement.Also, for most people wide boards are hard to come by so they aren't generally accustomed to making things with boards wider than 8".I have always felt that the less glue joints the better. It is rare that boards will suddenly blow apart, but glue joints will generally fail before the wood itself.J.P.http://www.jpkfinefurniture.com
Frenchy,
You know, I am just inclined , and I mean jeest a lilbitee, to think that a joined up board is more stable in that it is less likely to DISTORT rather than change dimension when compared to one wide board, especially when the made up board is put together from carefully selected narrow boards.Ofcourse both are subject to dimension changes. This is because a very wide flatsawn board may have growth rings ranging from flat to quarter and back with some in between, if you get what I am saying.
However, all this is by the by if we take sufficient precautions and use appropriate techniques-without tearing the ring out of it preferably.
What was that about TECHNICAL rattling? A rattle is a rattle, i.e. too loose.<G>
If you have spare cash, invest it in some of that prime timber you mention- decent timber well stored gains in value.Just drop by and select a few at a time.... Or you could reward one of those guys there to set aside the right stuff for you to select from.Philip Marcou
philip,
Have you seen the old pieces made a century or so ago? They always used a solid piece of wood if they could.. Granted glue technology wasn't very advanced but there were real reasons to do so.. Matching grain was only one of them..
To me a glue up is simply done because it's a shame to waste wood and, well, most people aren't terribly discriminating anyway! Not to take anything away from those who do glueups.. It takes skill and care to do a good glue up. Faced with the choice of not building something or building it using glue up panels I'd do a glue up..
But right now in my yard I have tens of thousands of board feet of nice (heck, great hardwood) that I paid an embaressingly low price for. I'll regret it in the future but I've tossed away boards that were less than 5 or 6 feet long. Some of them black walnut/ cherry/ white oak.... I have one stack of fiddle back maple that is unstrapped and the top boards are getting pretty cupped and warped so approximately 30 bd. feet of it will be tossed in the dumpster. That leaves me with about 1500 bd.ft. that I paid 10 cents a bd. ft..
I know this is a waste, I'd feel bad except there is a lot more to the story.....
Will a big wide board warp or cup? Sure! but so will a glued up board under identicle circustances.
Frenchy,
....right now I have tens of thousands of nice hardwoods "
Give me the grid location of your yard.....Philip Marcou
Philp,
I've repeatedly given my address, no big deal Woods been sitting in my yard for years and only this year will I finally get enough wood inside to bring my boat out of storage and once again park it in my driveway..
Actually if you swing by Johnson logging in cannon falls MN. they will saw you up all the wood you would ever want at prices socheap as to be shocking..
Speaking of rattling panels.....I saw a good tip on how to avoid rattle in doors. I believe I saw it in American Woodworker. It was an article on arch topped raised panel doors. The author suggested making 1/8" diameter beads of silcone caulking on pieces of wax paper. When assembling the doors, place a bead in each groove of the rails and stiles. This will allow the panel to still expand with temperature and humidity while keeping the panel tight in the door. I haven't tried it yet, but I will be making some doors soon, so I will try it.As for the wide board discussion, I guess if there are good reasons to make a piece from a wide board (i.e. grain matching) I would do it. Otherwise, why test fate. Sure, if the you have the luxury of either properly drying and prepping the board or finding someone that will, the board probably won't cup. But if you can get a good grain match with a glue up, it will give the most consistent results.Just my thoughts.....Tim
tim,
I wish I knew who started the myth that wide wood cups more than a glue up does.. (probably the glue salesman ;-) Glue up a desk top and make a desk top from a single piece of wood.. If they are both properly prepared and dried under identicle conditions what is there about a 36 inch wide board that will cup? The same forces working to warp the glue up will work to warp the solid piece..
prove it to yourself.. do a glue up and set it outside in the sun and weather with a solid board. check it a year later !
Your right, both pieces will move....BUT if you properly alternate growth rings of a glue-up, those movements cancel out. Sure it's not a perfectly flat piece of wood anymore, but it is better than the single wide board in terms of total deflection. That's not a myth, it's basic physics of wood.
Lets see, woodworker,
If I take my machinists straight edge to the headboard of my bed the wide pieces of mahogany are, er, ah, dead flat! Hmmmm, I mean I can't get a .0015 feeler gauge under it anyplace. Oh well the pine boards in my roll top desk should have some more cupping then that! After all, it's about 30 years old and it was the cheapest rolltop I could find and let's see, well there is daylight under the straight edge here and there but only where a pen has gouged it or it's been scratched somehow..
I know, I'll check those raised boards I just installed in my guest bathroom! They've been rained on and I still don't have a ventilator fan installed yet. Ah Ha!!!!! one of the panels over the tank (it's an old fashioned high mount pull chain toilet with an open tank) I can detect some bowing If I put the straight edge on one side to raise the other side to the maximum I can just wiggle the feeler gauge under so there must be .0015 difference from side to side.. That's in less then a year! heck in a decade at this rate it will bow out by over .015!! I'm so embarrassed ;-) of course I can't measure any deflection in any of the other 42 panels so if I average the warpage factor and assume that it will continue to warp the same amount for the next 100 years and divide by the remaining 41 panels I will have an average warpage factor of, er, em, not a lot... ;-)
I do agree that wood swells when it gets damp.. you may even have a point that it swells according to the direction of the growth rings.. Yet I couldn't measure any real deflection in several pieces that are really about at the peak of swelling... It's rained a lot lately and I don't have a roof over half of the house so it's wide open to weather!.
I'm not saying that wood doesn't cup,, bow, warp, weave, and dance the hootchie cootchie, I'm simply saying that you can't prove it at my house, that a glue up is any more stable then a solid piece of wood.. I've got plenty of wide boards here if you care to check them or send someone else to check them..
If you look at historic pieces of furniture you won't be able to prove it either!
Dude,
Whether your wide panel is made up of narrow or wide boards, bear in mind the time of year you make the doors. Fill up the grooves in april, and come august you may have to tell the lady those rifle shots she keeps hearing in the kitchen must be one of those drive-by shootings we keep hearing about! If you already know your moisture content, you already have a handle on this.
Why haven't I heard anyone ask about dude's jointer capacity? I assume he will want to joint, then thickness plane before his glue-up - unless he has a wide belt sander available.
jointer : 6" ridgid
planer : 13" ridgid
no fancy sanders
I've felt the frustration that you are probably facing now. With the equipment we have it is difficult to process a wide board the way we would like. In every instance I have "sliced" wide boards so they could properly jointed, then planed. In all cases it is virtually impossible to see the joint (grain discontinuity) caused by the loss of the 1/8" saw kerf - and impossible to see any glue joint. (I use plain white Elmer's glue and have never had a joint failure!)As for lack of a wide belt sander, I purchased a large area foot (I forget the proper name) for my belt sander. This device surrounds the sander with a large footprint, stiff bristled brush. I'm not sure if it was really worth it. If you edge-joint and glue up accurately, the random orbit sander will produce a mirror smooth surface.Best of luck to you.Jerry
I recently came across a beautiful piece of cherry all of 20" wide at my local mill. I snapped it up and, since it was way too wide for my planer, I had them run it through their 30" thickness sander to surface 2 sides. I build a sideboard around this piece, using it as the top with breadboard ends. One year later, it's still as flat as ever, and it certainly is NOT 1/4-sawn. If your stock is flat after drying, go ahead and use the wide boards. I suspect that the reason production shops use the narrower stock is that wide cherry is so rare (i.e., "expensive"). They use the more readily available narrow ( i.e., not as expensive) stock since its cheaper for them to join narrow boards than to find and buy wide stock. In my experience, cherry is stable enough to use wide if the piece is properly designed.
While I blieve 20" wide cherry is not rare, it is difficult for a production shop to get in the quantity it needs to keep running.I do agree it is more expensive.
GHR'
It really depends.. At the sawmill a wide board is the same price per bd.ft. as a narrow board. I did notice that starting at the kiln there was a premium charged per bd.ft.
Now plain and simple this is just a way to collect additional profit. They pay one price for all wood that arrives and then sort out the reallt premium pieces and sell those for an additional premium.. The pieces that are more narrow go out to shops who just place orders and don't bother to notice that they never get really great pieces.. They just glue everything to gether and make do and wonder why they are stuck in a rut..
For most mills, klins, and users narrow pieces of wood are just as good as wide. They just don't have the time to worry about such things.The mill that saws and dries for me charges a premium for larger logs and sells by the log not by the board. (I really need to order a couple 27" cherry logs for this winter.)
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