Milling Stock

A good question. I’m going to follow this link as I’ve found a supplier for rough lumber.

-- The smell of wood, coffee in the cup, the wife let's me do my thing, the lake is peaceful. http://web.me.com/deceiver6/Deceiver/Craftsman_on_the_lake/Craftsman_on_the_lake.html

always rough mill and then finish mill. the inside of wood is always going to be more moist than the outside and have stresses in it that will need to be released. and a featherboard dosent keep the board straight it just holds it against the fence. so the featherboards not to blame for any movement your getting

To question 1, No.
I mill to thickness in one shot. The key is to remove the same amount of wood from both faces otherwise it can bow.
2. This might due to your technique when using the featherboard.
Are you using a splitter? If the splitter is misaligned it can throw off your rips.

One more thing. Are you confident that your rip fence is aligned properly?

-- Brian http://www.garagewoodworks.com

I always mill oversize, (Long, wide and thickness) and then finish to final size after a period of aging in the oversize mode.

All of my wood is rough sawn from a sawmill. All of my wood is air dried, unless you call storing wood in the attic of a barn that had a temp of 137 deg during the summer, something else.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

listen to Karson !

Marcus,

Don’t over complicate milling lumber. Face joint one side. Plane opposite face. Crank down the planer and plane opposite face. Crank down again by the same amount. Flip the board over and plane opposite face. Repeat cranking down the planer (by the same amount) and flipping faces until you reach your required thickness. I never have any problems when done this way. Good luck.

-- Brian http://www.garagewoodworks.com

I’m with Brian.

If you truly need to work the wood oversize and wait, you might not have the best stock, or you may need to study up on selection. Properly dried stock really won’t move that much, and the hand fitting process of assembling hand-made, one-off furniture will correct minor differences in size.

Remember… If you mill all properly selected wood that will be edge joined together, it will move in thickness together. If your edge joined top shrinks 1/8” in width, who cares? It will all shrink or expand at the same rate. Wood that doesn’t need to be edge joined often doesn’t require microscopic precision in thickness, and typical widths of rails and stiles, runners, etc… don’t require microscopic tolerances in width.

Furniture should be built with movement in mind. Waiting for the “perfect” moment to work the wood is futile.

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