My first boards are warping already - Woodworking Talk

greg4269ub · 09-17-2009, 11:40 PM

i sawed my first log last weekend and as of yesterday two of the boards are warping already

. i will be putting more boards on top of them this weekend and plan on placing concrete blocks on the top of the pile as weights. is there anything else i should be taking into consideration to help prevent warping. i have done a bit of reading about tension within the logs as they grow how does this come into play when millng them as it relates to warping? any other advice about proper milling would be great. i don't want to be just a guy who saws logs i would like some quality wood to build with when i'm done.

**Daren** · 09-18-2009, 09:27 AM

Some wood moves more than others just because of its species. Then there are the stress logs you mentioned, some logs from the same species will move more than others. Small logs (in my experience) move more than large ones when milled. And some boards from a single log will move more than others...so you have plenty of potential movement I guess is the point. It's best to always weigh the stacks as it is milled, they can move in a matter of days (in your experience now). I would take a wild guess and say the boards that are warping are from the outer part of the log, the center is closer to 1/4 sawn and more stable.

Don't get discouraged. When I first started milling I was just taking in any free logs I could wrangle up and "practicing", figuring out the mill/log handling all that jazz...I had quite a pile of cupped and warped soft maple/sweetgum/elm. On the bright side the maple ended up making decent stickers, some of which I still have around. But it sure was pitiful looking at the first 1/2 dozen or so logs I milled after they dried (to this day I don't like milling sweetgum for myself). You'll get the hang of it, you can't just mill most species and leave them lay though.

greg4269ub · 09-18-2009, 11:10 AM

you are correct the boards which are warping are the ones that have bark on the outer edges of the board. i was planning on weighting the pile down across the top directly over the stickers with 8" concrete wall blocks. do you think that will be enough?

jeffreythree · 09-18-2009, 11:18 AM

They are building a school near me and cut the sidewalk up to dig up a water line. It made some nice flat pieces to put on top of my wood stacks, they even sliced it up into ~40-50 pound square pieces for me. I started looking around and there is a lot of free concrete laying around if you ask. Some wood just warps. My cedar elm moved a lot with a bunch of cedar, a sliced up osage stump, and ~200 pounds of bricks on top.