Wood Thickness Question

[Tanus]

Hello Group,

A few months ago, FWW had plans for a cherry cabinet that hangs on a wall. Some of you may have seen it. It looks like a project that a newb such as me might be able to tackle, so I started wrapping my head around how I'd go about it.

The planks are 2/4 cherry and I called my local wood supplier

to see if I could get the pieces in the widths I wanted. This is not a big piece, so the amounts of wood are small.

The reply I got back was that they'll mill it for me(I don't have the machinery to do that) from their stock 4/4, but insisted on a deposit up front because in the past they've found that planing wood down to that thickness has left their customers very unhappy due to cupping of the wood after milling.

What they said about cupping made sense to me, and I was appreciative that they gave me the warning. I"ve not gone ahead and ordered it yet, and have been wondering what I'm going to do about the issue. I can re-design the piece to 3/4, but I'm worried that the new thickness will make the piece too clunky.

I can go back to wood-source, pay the deposit, and have them mill it to the sizes specified in the plans.

I can have them mill pine to that spec., make the piece as a demo, and see what happens, but now I'm into a diff. species of wood, and frankly I'd rather build something out of a wood I've not tried before. I expect they'll say the same about pine being milled down to that thickness too.

What do the rest of you think?

Tanus

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Try building the ice out of 3/4" pine to see if it does look too clunky.

I've had some thin woods cup on me, so it is a concern.

[Leon]

Any milled wood can cup however it is more prone to happen if not milled equally from both sides. Milling only one side reveals a surface that is unequal in moisture content to the other unmilled side. This often causes cupping.

[John Grossbohlin]

If they remove material from both sides as they thin the stock that will help even out the moisture and help minimize the cupping. Another consideration here is that the cabinet is fairly small and with the stock

1/2" thick some cupping shouldn't be too bad to deal with even if you hand cut your dovetails.

If you get some cupping you can clamp a straight board to the stock while laying out and cutting the dovetails--sort of like on page 47 where they show routing away the waste but I'd place it with the grain 90 degrees to the stock. Once glued up the dovetail joinery on the corners and shelf will hold it in shape...

John

[Ba r r y]

Skip the pine in favor of poplar for "exploration" work. Poplar is still cheap, but it's working properties are more "hardwoodish" and much better than pine.

Lumber providers don't typically face joint wood, but simply thickness plane both sides. Millwork shops often will, for an additional fee. Since the wood is already trying to cup at 4/4, proper jointing goes a long way to eliminate cupping.

One way to control cupping during milling is try to remove similar amounts of wood from both sides, and to stop at an intermediate step, letting the wood "rest" for a few days, before final milling.

Personally, I might just go for it and mind the annular rings during construction. The rule of thumb is that the rings will try to straighten, so plan the boards so that cupping will be less noticeable.

[Tanus]

Thank you all. Great resonses and quick too.

I'll go back to wood-source and ask for milling on both sides. I don't mind doing the dovetails by hand, but the routed ones a tad cleaner. But it's something I need to spend a bit more time on anyway.

Tanus