Shopsmith Forums

Yesterday I had to rip about an 1" off a board which had aged with me for about a year and half. The part I wanted/needed was fine but I could see the cut off was beginning to twist as I was cutting it. Today it has continued to do so. This is obviously not what you want to happen so I'm glad that this is the cut off.

Wood has built in stresses and this is not uncommon to have/see happen. Thought I'd post the pictures here in the beginning woodworking area so you can see what I saw and keep that in mind when woodworking.
When rotated 90 degrees it looks like this:
As you can see it will not even lay flat in the position. In this last picture I clamped it so you can see it better.
Ed

That's normal. Whenever I cut narrow strips for stripping sides or ends, I have that happen. A good rule is that you don't cut wood into narrow strips unless you will be attaching the strips to a wide and stable board where you can force it straight permanently.

Yep! now that "old growth" is barely no more, the younger trees have not been allowed to stand 100+ years and stabilize the stresses of youth. When you see the width of the growth rings, you can understand the stresses. Same is true of softwoods and hardwoods.

Also newer milling techniques get lumber from leaning trees, even larger branches where stress is grown in the wood.

It's not the wood, it's still straight. The world around us has twisted. Either that or I watched too much Fox news today