Greetings all. I’m looking for some info on using thicker stock in white oak. Building a table after the style of Sidney Barnsley, looking at thicknesses up to 5″ for the legs. No lumberman I’ve talked to so far carries it: they all mutter something about being hard to dry. I’m sure I could get some from a timberframing source, but am I asking for MC trouble there?
The Barnsley tables I’ve seen (via photos admittedly) seem to have held up without checking, and the timbers do not appear laminated. Could this be a difference with the english vs. our US white oak? I understood them to be fairly close relatives.
Any advice on sources, potentials headaches etc. would be gladly recieved!
Cheers.
Replies
"Hard to dry" is a general statement; what they are referring to are the extended kiln schedules needed for drying extremely thick lumber or the even more extended drying time needed for air-drying of pieces like this. You can probably find oak like this from a framing source, but could run into two problems; you are (likely) looking for a quantity in the low hundreds of bf; they are used to selling in multiple thousands. The second is that you will not know the actual MC until you cut into it; if it is high, it could take may months (or more than a year) to come down to the point where you could mill it to dimension. You run the risk either way that internal stresses could result in visible checking over time, even though the internal fractures that cause them are not terribly important otherwise for just supporting a table.
Why not fabricate the posts out of 6-8/4 stock (hollow or with a solid core)? You could pick the figure and orientation much easier that way (being too picky with solid stock would result in a very warm winter), and would still wind up with the same effect. If you used 8/4 or a solid core, you would also have nearly the same bomb-shelter-rated mass. :)
Just a thought...
/jvs
Finding oak dried above 8/4 is challenging, to say the least. I haven't discovered a place yet that will do, say, 16/4. A sawyer I spoke to about it once described the practice as prudent risk management. It could be possible to get oak to dry without severe splits and checks in that dimension, but the probability he felt was so small it didn't justify the attempt. If he ruins half a tree in the attempt, he's out what otherwise would have been usable lumber and profit. Add another vote for a square glue-up.
"The child is grown / The dream is gone / And I have become / Comfortably numb " lyrics by Roger Waters
i just attempted to dry 12/4 white oak i had cut for me... BIG mistake, obviously i dried it too fast... but even so... it expect 50%... bad checking... i was able to salvage enough for the legs of my bench and maybe a bit more.... but i'm SO glad i had most of it cut 4/4... even the small quantity of 8/4 i had cut has checked badly.
And i was diligent to seal the ends with anchorseal after cutting back all checking on the ends...even when the ends didn't check... all down the face of many of the boards-DEEP checks.
I'm now gonna face glue the 4/4 oak to make my table top 4" thick.
I was so disappointed.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled