Shopsmith Forums

charlese wrote:What's wrong with ripping the boards along the cracks. If you did that you would have solid boards of varying width. A good look in my mind.

I'm so glad someone else said this! I wrote this up yesterday and then felt it was so obvious a solution that there must be something wrong with it!

Chuck is probably right. Rip the boards and eliminate the cracks. Sycamore may be a very stressed wood to work with. You can do a very quick and simple test. Rip a board that has the cracks and see if it either binds or goes laterally on you. That will tell you how much internal stress there is. If it is very stressed you might want to choose another wood.
Paul

charlese wrote:What's wrong with ripping the boards along the cracks. If you did that you would have solid boards of varying width. A good look in my mind.

I'll take another look at the cracks -- I think some of them have a fair amount of curvature, in which case I'd have to rip out a good-sized strip.

I already have a varying-width pattern, BTW. The sawmill planed the rough lumber, edged the boards to standard widths of 3.5, 4, 5, 6, and 7 inches, and then machine-sanded one face. So I had no choice on the varying-width look - glad to hear you like it!

I did a bit of random-width pattern research online, and now have the clean straight boards sorted out into equal-width panels, each of which has a mix of the various board widths. And I have just enough of it to get the job done, with one 3-1/2" board in reserve. One screw-up on a wider board, and the 8' wide ceiling is going to have some butt-joints in it.

masonsailor2 wrote:Chuck is probably right. Rip the boards and eliminate the cracks. Sycamore may be a very stressed wood to work with. You can do a very quick and simple test. Rip a board that has the cracks and see if it either binds or goes laterally on you. That will tell you how much internal stress there is. If it is very stressed you might want to choose another wood.
Paul

No can do -- I have almost as much money in my 175 BF of Sycamore as you do in your teak tabletop!

algale wrote:

charlese wrote:What's wrong with ripping the boards along the cracks. If you did that you would have solid boards of varying width. A good look in my mind.

I'm so glad someone else said this! I wrote this up yesterday and then felt it was so obvious a solution that there must be something wrong with it!

You know, if the boards were still rough, I'd probably rip them along the cracks, glue them back together, and then mill them to final size. But alas, that is not a good option now, as a spousal-induced sense of urgency led me to pay the sawmill to do all the milling. (Except for the T&G, that is.) So now I have no extra thickness left for cleanup.

When all is said and done, I do want to have a fair number of nice wide boards. Skinny boards just don't give that vintage look, from back when virgin timberland was plentiful.

How thin are the boards? I mentioned the ripping option back in my post early on and I still think that might be your best solution. Biscuits can be put in pretty thin wood. I've used them in wood less then 5/8" thick and I would guess that one could go down to somewhere in the area of 1/2". If done right the fronts will be flat and would not need to be resurfaced other then maybe some light sanding at the glue line.

Ed

reible wrote:How thin are the boards? I mentioned the ripping option back in my post early on and I still think that might be your best solution. Biscuits can be put in pretty thin wood. I've used them in wood less then 5/8" thick and I would guess that one could go down to somewhere in the area of 1/2". If done right the fronts will be flat and would not need to be resurfaced other then maybe some light sanding at the glue line.

Ed

The boards are 3/4" thick nominal. Actually about 0.770", so no problem for biscuits. Plus I plan to mill the T&G with the boards face-down on my router table, so the faces will align even if the thickness varies a fuzz or two. I could probably even take a light pass through the planer to clean up the faces after regluing.

Great suggestion!

This morning, I came up with another idea. I had been worried that if I filled the splits with sawdust (or wood flour) and glue, the glue would get smeared around and ultimately make blotches in the finish. But wait, what if for the wood-flour putty binder, I use the exact same stuff that I'll use for the final finish? Hmmm, can you do that?

Later, it struck me that Bob Flexner probably addresses that in his book "Understanding Wood Finishing". So I just dug out my copy, and indeed he does. He advises that getting a good color match is difficult if you are going to stain the wood, but I'm not staining. And I can easily make the wood flour by grinding up some Sycamore scraps with a 12" sanding disc, and capturing it in a freshly-cleaned Dust Deputy bucket.

So I think I'll give that a try on the backside of one of the cracked boards. If it works, great. If not, I can still rip and reglue.

I just had an idea and while I have not tried it on splitting wood....... Sometime when you have a stress crack in metal or plastic you drill a hole at the beginning and end of the crack and the crack stops there. Again no personal experience with this on wood but If you don't do something the crack(s) might continue, so so filling might/will not be the answer.

Ed

Question is, is the splitting stable? Will it increase or other boards start?

Do not cut acclimation short.