How long should wood acclimate to my shop?
Hello fellow woodworkers, I’m building a side board out of black walnut. I bought some very nice 4/4 walnut and it’s now stickered and sitting on my wood rack in my garage shop – not air conditioned. I’m in central Texas.
Everyone says the wood needs to acclimate to my shop. I don’t disagree, but how much acclimation (time) is necessary? It was in a warehouse 50 miles away and now it’s in my garage. These places seem pretty similar.
And one more thing. My cabinet will have sliding front doors. I’m planning on making them out of boards boards, not plywood. The FW article on sliding doors specifically cautioned against using boards, citing the possibility of boards warping. Am I being foolish to even consider using lumber for the doors?
As always, thanks for your help.
Replies
We used to process 1,000,000 bd ft of hard maple per year making 200 chairs, 50 tables and bed and cabinets each day and the wood either came on rails from the kiln, from trucks or in pre glued panels, we never heard about the concept of acclimating. The only factor affecting further stability through the factory was how dry the wood was when it started processing, 6-8%.
I’ll take lumber in from freezing temperatures and will give them a day or two at least but I don’t complain if it’s longer than that.
I do mill larger than finished size and let that sit for a night at least. I don’t often see changes but it has happened.
I’m slow so for a large project will mill what I need for the upcoming week or so before doing more. I’m in process of a new workbench and only just last weekend rough milled the front apron and end caps despite starting the project first week of January.
I don’t really see a lot of difference but I’ve seen some.
On the doors it may depend on size, design and thickness. Leave room for expansion and contraction. I’m always surprised how much breadboard tops shrink and swell.
Mike
A good pinless moisture meter really helps eliminate the guesswork. If moisture content is in the realm of acceptability, and I have a tight deadline, I’ll do a preliminary oversized milling pretty quick and sticker it at least overnight to see if and how it moves. If I’m not rushed I’ll let it sit in the shop for as long as I can before doing my first surfacing, and then let it sit for two weeks stickered before moving on.
Waiting never hurts, but I’m not sold that it always helps. Moving forward might be fine if moisture content is ok. A sideboard with sliding doors is a high cost project. I’d want to be certain I had quality, stable material. Rushing things and getting frustrated or losing a client would obviously be a bummer if it’s avoidable.
Not sure that helps but sounds like a fun project!
There are three points of acclimation. The first is from the source to your shop. It doesn't sound like that's a big deal for you. If the wood is still flat in a couple of days, its probably not going to go Pringles on you. Next touchy point is just after milling. Mill both sides evenly to release the same surface tension on both sides. If it's going to behave badly, it will do it by the next morning. The most important time will be when you move the piece from the shop to the house. That will be your biggest challenge. If there is any way to keep the wood in the house when you are not working it, that might be a viable solution. If you could limit the wood to 6 hours in the shop, that might help you. If you can't do that, your design must account for wood movement -oversize holes, dados, etc.
As for the doors, thinner wood ismore prone to warping. Not sure what you are thinking, so I can't say if you are on a dangerous path. If you have rift or quartersawn wood your chances of stability go up dramatically.
Going in a modern climate controlled house wood needs to 6-8% MC.
If it’s kiln dried you’re ok, if it’s air dried you’ll never get there without either a kiln or acclimate it inside your house.
You really need a moisture meter to determine where you’re at.
There is no one right answer, it can depend on location, board thickness, time of year, etc. But I like to acclimate my wood for a couple of weeks to be safe. Moisture meters can be helpful with 4/4 stock but their value in my opinion declines as the board gets thicker, with 8/4 and thicker I don't feel they give a true reading for the center of the boards.
I recently had an situation where a last minute design change resulted in me needing to pick up additional 6/4 Hickory to complete a project. The bulk of the wood had been acclimated for a month as I generally like to buy the wood for my next project as I begin the current one, this gives it plenty of time to acclimate without slowing me down or taking up storage space. The acclimated wood milled using my standard practice of rough milling, restacking for a few days and final milling left the boards perfectly true and flat after cutting and milling. The new boards I had to rush into production bowed noticeably. So count me amongst those who believe in giving wood a couple of weeks to adjust.
I use a moisture meter (it was not expensive). I grab a price of scrap of the same species and see where that is (assuming it is acclimated) and check the new wood to the old wood.
Get a good pinless moisture meter and continue to check the lumber until the levels stop going down. To my understanding, it would be stable at this point.
When watching the MC move, I pencil circles on the wood so I am measuring at exactly the same spot each time' several places per board. This gives me a better idea of when the change is slowing. I pencil each reading beside the circle; much easier than going to paper.
This works for me: Garage storage to shop storage - long as possible. After first dimensioning - not as long. After final dimensioning, at least overnight. Make sure to carry in extra and acclimated it as well in case there's a miscut.
Have you considered changing the sliding door design to mitigate future issues?
I ordered the pinless meter and am waiting on delivery.
Regarding the sliding door design, my cabinet is mid-century modern and the smooth front, sliding door works right visually. As to changing the design, not many options come to mind. One option less attractive to me is to use veneer plywood. While solving the stability problem, it adds others - hiding the end layers is one and designing an acceptable finger groove so the doors can be slid back and forth is the other. Also, I like the differences in grain pattern that the boards bring. Plywood has a consistent, repeating pattern which, well, looks like plywood, and is less pleasing, in my opinion.
I've seen thick slab tables that have a steel c-channel inserted into grooves to keep the slab flat. I thought that if I could find some steel angle iron in a very small dimensions, I could do something similar. I don't know if angle iron of that small size is available or not - I could not find any in a brief google/ebay search.
Other suggestions on the doors are welcome.
I live in CT and buy my lumber locally. I’ve use two different lumber yards and maybe it’s just me, but, I still have wood look like a potato chip after being in the shop for a week and after careful milling (taking equal amounts off of each side). As you can imagine it’s extremely frustrating. Especially with door stock.
I too have a unconditioned shop and find that it can work to your advantage as the humidity will make your doors swell as large as they will get. When you bring them indoors, to a conditioned space (heat and AC) they it will shrink slightly. There is a calculator on line that give the amount of wood expansion by region and wood type. These are very helpful.
Lastly, heard a Shop Talk Live where Bob Van Dyke put a glued up panel in a plastic bag and over at least a year (longer if I remember) and it moved only 1/32 inch. I use this method all of the time and I works amazing. The wood does not twist or warp. And taken when taken out of the bag for 6-8 hours to work on it’s fine. It goes back in the bag till the next day. Once glued up I don’t worry as much about big wood movement. Large plastic bags can be found on line. I use a 90 gallon bag which is almost 4 ft. long and 2 plus feet wide. I even put glued up parts in a plastic bag, if I’m really worried about wood movement, until I get a finish on them.
Lastly, lastly ( sorry for being long winded) frame and panel design will hide plywood edges, if this is what you had in mind. Or you can always put a banding on the plywood or use a thin 1/8 veneer or thinner over some Baltic Birch plywood. ( big box plywood is ?)
Good luck
For the doors, you could use Krenov's shop made plywood technique still have the grain pattern you choose and have a stable panel.https://www.finewoodworking.com/2011/12/08/shop-sawn-veneers-make-better-furniture
WHAT'S GOING ON?
At 4:30 AM I got 14 "replies" to my comment on this, which was made on 3/9. There are zero replies to my comment here. I also got 11 replies to a comment made in Dec; yet the discussion shows zero replies to my comment.
Anyone have any ideas ? Its not April 1 yet.
Yep, something is going on with FWW servers. I got email notice of "New replies" to an old thread yesterday (Woodworking vs Bridge)....like ten in row, all about the same time. When I followed them up, the post had ZERO new replies.
Ok, I was worried, as I had a near-death experience with a scam yesterday and wondered if there might be some connection.
When a spam reply is posted, notifications go out that there are new posts. When the spam is deleted, nothing is left behind.
I tend to buy lumber six months in advance of a project start. A small part of that is to let things acclimate. The other part is that the place I use to pre-dimension/S4S the wood (only have hand tools so happy to pay someone to do the unpleasant work) can sometimes be busy and take a few months from order to completing the work and I don't want to nag them so give them lots of time before I really need it.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled