Oak Pub Table #2: Milling the Lumber

Looks likes things are coming a long quite nicely. If you just leave the sawdust on the ground it makes it a lot softer, but you loose tools.

-- Bill - "Freedon flies in your heart like an Eagle" Audie Murphy

Excellent work. I have the same problem with dust collection. I did break down and buy a dust deputy from Oneida and it works great for one tool at a time kind of thing. I still find that under heavy use I need to clean my shop vac filter probably once per shop session (every 3-4 hours or so).

My question for you with this process is do you let the wood sit or acclimate after you mill it? I seem to have a hard time with wood movement after I plane or joint boards. Any thoughts about milling and then letting the wood sit? Thanks for sharing!

-Will

Nice looking lumber, be interested to see how the finished piece comes out.

WWilson – I too have also had the same problem with wood movement. I spent a few hours preparing some lumber for some drawers a few months back, but I wasnt going to be able to dovetail them until my next garage day which happened to be a few weeks later.

Once at the dovetail jig, router in hand, I was saying to myself how nice it was to be using milled lumber instead of the S4S garbage the box stores sell. First time I had attempted the drawers I used S4S and wound up with drawer boxes that looked horrible, open joints, werent square, etc. Much to my surprise when I went to assemble the drawer made with my milled lumber, I had similar issues. To a much lesser degree than with the box store stuff but there were still gaps in the joints that I wasnt happy with, they were square though. (I am a bit picky about things I make myself) Let me preface all of this with the fact that I am a machinist by trade. I understand paralleism, flatness, squareness etc quite well. I checked all the lumber as I was milling it and it was all near as perfect as I could make it. Trying to find the cause of my dovetail issues (while saying to myself “this shouldnt be happening, I milled this stuff myself!”, I began inspecting my now dovetailed lumber and found it cupped, twisted and generally not in the state I left it in 2 weeks earlier. BTW I was able to salvage the drawers, I just wont be admiring the joinery on them without cursing myself a little.

Not days later I was on the Wood Whisper’s blog and he mentioned this very thing. Short version is he mills his lumber to within an 1/8” or so and lets it sit in the shop for 2 weeks to move however they are going to move and then finish mills them. I will be doing this from now on as it seems like some very sound advice.

Chris.

-- -Director of slipshod craftsmanship and attention deficit woodworking

Very true Bill, but I have enough fun losing tools.

Will – this is my first “bigger” project. When I say bigger I mean longer than a weekend. So I don’t have much experience with movement after milling. It does concern me though. The humidity is pretty high here in the summer so the boards sat in my garage for 3 weeks before I began. I am going to start the assembly process tomorrow so I’m hoping that isn’t enough time for significant movement.