Wood movement on a small scale

Good question :-)) I’m interested too.

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence

Hairy, your way over my head when talking about a project like this but it all sounds very interesting and I hope everything works out well on it. I hope that I can find the time to get into some turnings. I have actually done very little with my lathes and have certainly not made any canes.

-- If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau

The only input I can give you is that I pretty much ignore wood movement in small projects, and I have never had an issue. Now I’ve only been woodworking 5 or 6 years, so take that for what it’s worth. :-)

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Here’s something from another forum by an unidentified contributor.

“A long time ago I’d shown my guys how to pre-glue end grain, but no one until now had any reason to test it. I don’t think they actually believed it worked; they probably thought the old man from the old school was crazy, but they did it anyway to humor me. They believe it now, and the others have run their own tests with pretty much the same results.

Lightly dampen the end grain with a damp cloth/rag, spread on a thin layer of glue and let it sit for a minute or two. Then glue as normal and assemble. The problem is that the end grain absorbs the glue and starves the joint, robbing it of any real strength. By pre-gluing the end grain, you’re essentially blocking the flow away from the joint; the glue pretty much has to stay put.”

-- "The unexpected, when it happens, generally happens when you least expect it."

A dark end-grain wouldn’t work visually (like the cross-section of a large dowel)?. They would expand at a more even rate (though I imagine there would be variation between wood species), and there would be long-grain to long-grain glue contact the length of the hollowed-out cylinder walls. I’ve also seen some pretty interesting end-grain patterns in cutting boards and such. As Charlie said, though, I generally ignore this in small projects as well, so i may not be the best giver of advice.

-- Dan Chiappetta, NYC, http://www.9x7woodworks.com

hello Hairy
not that I think its a big isue on small things but
have you looked at Mathiase site
http://woodgears.ca/
he has somewhere in there something about woodmoovement
and I think a page where he has calculated them out on a list

Dennis

Thanks for the input.

I think I’ll do it and find out.

Dennis, that link eventually took me to this. Everything I wanted to know, but was afraid to ask.

http://www.estv.ipv.pt/paginaspessoais/jqomarcelo/Tim3/artigos/ShrinkingSwellingWoodInUse.pdf

-- It must be jelly baby, cause jam don't shake like that...

that was a serius pdf file :-) that was one I hadn´t seen thank´s

no I was thinking of this one
http://woodgears.ca/wood_grain/shrinkage.html
and one of his latest where here use a cheap Voltmeter to messure the moistier in the wood

Edit : down on the site there is a link to (how to calculate shrinkage)