Re: how can wood movement be compensated for in this piece?

[Andy Dingley]

(sorry if this is a repost -- my first try seems to have been lost in >cyberspace) >

>I was looking around for inspiration, and I found this piece: > > ancestors ! That's an ugly thing.

Find a copy of Gustav Ecke, and see what it was supposed to look like.

It's a nice piece, and it turned out to be a good example for something >I've been wondering about. In this example, the body of the piece is one >wood (or ply with veneer) and it is border with a mitered box around it.

Veneer _is_ plywood. Don't sweat it. 8-)

Using plywood is perfectly acceptable for a large flat surface, and it makes movement a lot easier to handle.

Now for $4,000, maybe there's a question about the fitnes of ply....

So how do you avoid tragedy from wood movement in this piece?

By studying traditional Chinese furniture design. They had a climate that gave a lot of trouble with this, and they did it in a way that's both entirely different and considerably more sophisticated than Western styles (and did it all several hundred years earlier). Chinese joinery is incredible stuff - absolutely no fear of complexity, and beautiful workmanship too. I don't even begin to understand it, but if you ever have the chance, take a look at a good antique collection _after_ you've read some cross-sectional drawings (because you'll never see the joint lines otherwise).

MoFA in Boston have had good exhibitions.

But even ply has *some* movement, right?

Some, but it really is small enough to ignore on a table top.

[Elgar Ticklemore and the Lords]

yes when doing mitered bands around a table top like that, you need a stable substrate.

i don't know the real expansion rates for plywood, but it's very minimal for even an entire sheet, (once completely dry) and you could do better with MDF,

a practical cabinetmaker would use what would work best, ply or MDF is not really an issue with me, provided the under surface was attended to. provided your not going for a museum quality reproduction ply is fine.

traditional chinese furniture can and will have blown out corners, sometimes with the gaps filled in entirly with finish that someone has applied later.

Dover has a book on Chinese furniture that is pretty good, measured drawings and details on construction. the Chinese aesthetic cannot be denied but the Japanese show the most sensitivity to the material and being that way avoid all that flush work

[Elgar Ticklemore and the Lords]

it still is, isn't it ?

[Mike Hide]

I am not sure ,I have not seen any [lumbercore ] around here foe some time now .

Again I suspect the outer frame is not solid wood but veneer arranged to look like a separate frame on the same base as the panel it encloses..

If it is a true solid frame with mitered corners there is no way the corners will not show evidence of wood movement . I say this having played around with antiques for many years . It is my personal belief that wood over time not only expands and contracts due primarily due to humidity changes and to a lesser degree heat but overall has a tendancy to shrink over the years . For instance take the back of an antique chest of drawers in particular a back that consists of a series of thin boards arranged vertically ,I am pretty certain when originally done the boards fitted perfectly . Now replacing the boards and butting them to each other there will be a remaining space of at least 3/8"

Getting back to the frame, antique frames always open at the inside corners for the same reason as explained earlier ,the shrinkage being across the frame grain and not in the direction of the miter. thats why I think the frame is actually a veneered arrangement on the piece in question.

One question, at least in my mind , is the discovery of laquered items still in perfect condition which were cargo of sunken Spanish gallions. If this is true the laquer must have been a perfect "sealer" and and a very durable finish to boot. I still do not think the laquer prevented wood movement in this case obviously there was no change in humidity and probably there was not much change in temperature ....mjh

[Elgar Ticklemore and the Lords]

in

crossveneer

home depot's got it, meranti core: more holes than madonnas' chastity belt.

answer: nematodes, tiny worms who excrete lemon oil and paste wax. :-)

[Peter Ashby]

Considering the known diversity of the nematodes, and also the level our remaining ignorant I would not discount the possibility. I would only suspect two different species, one for the lemon oil and one for the paste wax. Throw in a sea squirt and you have cellulose sanding sealer ;-)

Peter

[Elgar Ticklemore and the Lords]

throw in an over exuberant sponge applicator named bob, with parallelogram pants and you have a hypothesis,