Wood and Controlled Climate
 

I know many luthiers store their wood in a very controlled climate in order to stabalize the wood before building.Is this done mainly to give the builder a solid reference point to start?
It seems to me that in real world conditions an instrument can do some "strange" things once it leaves that controlled environment.Would building in a less controlled environment expose some of these problems earlier?
I have a nice piece of tiger maple I was going to use for a top.It was from kiln dried stock. I then split it for a bookmatch.One month later,one piece had warped and twisted enough to be firewood:mad: where the other one is bone straight:confused: .Again "uncontrolled" conditions(a room in my house) where the temp and humidity changed due to furnace operation and winter humidity levels.
Thanks:cool:
Pete

How did you store your maple billets? were they stacked together?

As far as I know, in the acoustic instrument world the idea is to get the wood as dry and thus stable as possible so that further shrinkage is minimised. Swelling is less of an issue. Acoustic instruments swell and shrink with the weather.

As far a solidbodies go, people tend to seal the wood heavily and this counteracts movement due to climate changes in the long run. So I guess you need to keep the humidity relatively constant while building, that's all.

So far I have built my bass over a year in totally uncontrolled conditions, humidity ranging from 98RH down to 35RH and temperatures from freezing to 42C. It makes life bit more difficult, and sure the wood has moved a lot, but on the whole it appears to have stabilized and apart from a few small issues it looks like continued movement in the wood won't be a problem.

Thanks Matthew,
Yes I did store them together in the house.Laid nice and flat.Guess there may have been more moisture in the wood than advertised.The place I buy my wood from kiln dries their own.

Dry and tension..
 

You can stick a moisture inside the already split wood or at the ends before splitting to tell if it is from 6-8% which is ok for Kiln Dried. Some species are fine Air Dried a 8-10% or sometimes more but long indoor storage may dry it even lower to 6%. Since the room Humidity is usually 20-60% on average you can expect all dried wood to gain 'surface' moisture and be only drier on the inside. This is where long term indoor drying comes in handy as we call this acclimation.

All wood has some tension inside of it. When wood is sawn off of a log it tends to 'cup' AWAY from the heart of the tree. That's why you see boards having a inner cupped surface and outer humped surface. On Maple boards, the cupped surface is from the outer side of the log and usually has better color and maybe better figure depending.

When wood is re-sawn especially kiln dried, it often 'springs' or gradually 'creeps'. Air dried wood moves less and acclimated kiln dried wood somewhere in between. In our shop, we use fairly old stored wood for all of our Bass components whether it's Body or Neck parts. This ensures stability. Also, we don't usually split wood unless we are about to glue it up right away either. When we do split tops and do not glue up the laminates within the same day, we flat stack them so they don't warp or cup out of shape. Then on the other hand, some pieces of wood just have a mind of their own and do the unexpected. That's the joy of wood working, You never know what you're gonna get..lol

Have you seen our on-line tour and wood stocking methods?

Also, here are some other wood related links from our website;
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/woodpa...econtents.html
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/sawmill/sawdefault.html
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/models...mycontents.htm
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/md/default.htm
http://www.kensmithbasses.com/woodpa...lnutgrades.htm

Many thanks Ken!! I've learned a lot from those few paragraphs.I too love wood and that is why I here.
What I hope to do with the warped piece is to surface plane it down to level(will do it with the side that isn't warped too) and glue it on the body blank before it moves.Don't know whether or not it will work....but hey....this is an experiment:D
Thanks Again!
Pete

Plane?
 

Why not just wet it down and press it flat in some clamps or to a flat surface or table. Then let it stay in clamps for a week or two and get it thicknessed and glued up as soon as you take it out of the pressing.

Pictures? So we know what we are talking about here?

Will try and get some pictures this weekend to show you.I didn't think you could bring back the wood once it cupped and twisted slightly.I am learning a lot here.The pieces are roughly 11/16 of an inch thick.I made sure I had plenty to work with being a newbie.
Thanks again for the advice.

plaining flat
 

Plaining it flat does not ensure the tension will be gone. Flattening it would but 11/16" is very very thick. What are you making with that? Our Tops are about 5/16" or so finished. We split 1" wood and clean it up to .350-.400" maximum and then thickness the final down as needed. Be careful not to crack or spit the wood. When you said you made a top I was thinking about 1/4" or so. WE could actually split 11/16" and make a top close to 1/4" from that as we have done in the past if the wood is flat.

Well originally I was going to do some carving and kinda "archtop" it similar to a Les Paul's top.However I am going to keep it simple being it's my first one.;)

"WE could actually split 11/16" and make a top close to 1/4" from that as we have done in the past if the wood is flat."

The one side of the bookmatch is flat..........maybe this is a possibility for me?:rolleyes:I personally don't own a large bandsaw,however I do have access to one.