Warp factor

[mryan11]

Howdy All:

I keep running across some really nice wood but it's warped. Does anyone have a good way to work out those warps? Or is it just a bust?

Thanks!

Mike

[sawdustus]

Mike, it all depends on the type of warp. Picture your board; it has length with ends, and width with sides. If you look at the end of a board and it is curved, it is cupped. If you look down the side edge of the board and it is curved it is bowed.
Bowing is the easiest to fix. Just cut the board into shorter lengths so that the bow basically disappears. A little sanding or jointing and it is a straight, although shorter board.
Cupping requires you to either uncup it by putting some moisture back into the concave side of the board, planing or sanding off the higher edges of the concave side and then putting that now flat side down on a planer and planing it to equal but thinner thickness again.
If the board is both cupped and bowed, it is twisted and useful for firewood.

Hope this helps.

george

[wood-n-things]

Great reply George...

[Janette]

I once spent $100 on a gorgeous board of figured bubinga. It cupped, bowed AND twisted!! Man oh man was I mad. Since I do intarsia, I cut of what I need for a piece and flatten the bottom with a belt sander. I'll never be able to use big long pieces of it, but I'm determined not to waste any of it because it was so expensive. Can you use smaller pieces of it?

That's one thing I've noticed with thinner boards - I rarely ever see them totally flat.

[dankc908]

Originally Posted by Janette

I once spent $100 on a gorgeous board of figured bubinga. It cupped, bowed AND twisted!! Man oh man was I mad. Since I do intarsia, I cut of what I need for a piece and flatten the bottom with a belt sander. I'll never be able to use big long pieces of it, but I'm determined not to waste any of it because it was so expensive. Can you use smaller pieces of it?

That's one thing I've noticed with thinner boards - I rarely ever see them totally flat.

Since I, also, turn pens I would use the cupped, bowed and twisted by cutting into 3/4 x 3/4 x 5 pieces (might go a little bigger on the 3/4 sides) and turning into a pen. The warpage doesn't matter in this instance.

Someday I will get to the lumberyard and get the wood before they run it through their Warper

[mryan11]

Thanks for all your input. After I wrote that I searched in the forum some more and came to the conclusion that much of it is something I can't do much about. I have used some cupped where I could cut off enough of it to have a piece that I could sand flat. I also created a can for the worst of it in case I decide to try intarsia, which seems like something that would be more amenable to curvature. Another thing I tried was using some of it in a composite creation as shown in the picture. The top wood is mahogany and was slightly warped but little enough that I could cut it and glue it to the base board. Bowing seems pretty amenable to this type of use. Again, thanks for the input.Scroll Saw Sign - Residential Counselors.jpg

[Bill Wilson]

If you have a planer or jointer, you can make use of a lot of stock that otherwise would end up as firewood. The key being that the stock is thick enough to allow you to mill it flat and still provide a useable thickness.

I got a bunch of cutoffs from a saw mill one time. Most are twisted or cupped, some are both. They are roughsawn to about 1 1/8" so there is plenty of wood to work with. I don't have a jointer, so I rely on my planer.

If the board is twisted, I lay it on a flat surface and mark the high corners. Flip it over and hit it with a hand plane to knock those high spots down. Do this until the board no longer rocks on a flat surface (easier to do the shorter the board is). This is the bottom face for planing. The surface doesn't have to be perfectly flat, just has to lay flat as it's going through the planer. If you don't want to hand plane, you can tape thin shims on the opposite bottom corners. The goal is to get a board that doesn't rock as it passes through the planer.

You have to have infeed and outfeed extensions as long as the piece you are planing for this to work well, so an auxiliary planer bed made of one of those laminate coverd shelf boards works great. Run the piece through the planer (light passes) until you have the top face planed flat and smooth. Then turn it over to plane the bottom until it is flat (remove your shims if you used them). Even the worst pieces of roughsawn 4/4 stock will finish out at almost 3/4" thick. The same thing can be done with thinner boards, just that your finished thickness will be less. In other words, if you have a board already planed to 3/4" thickness and it's now twisted, you can still probably get 1/2" out of it. If you have thinner stock that is twisted, then it's probably is firewood, unless you are making veneer.

Cupped boards are easier to fix, but again you need adequate material to mill it flat. For roughsawn boards, I just put the raised surface up and take light passes off with the planer until the surface is flat. Then flip it over to do the other side. If the stock is a little thinner and there is danger that the planer rollers will simply force it flat as it goes through, I tape a shim down the middle of the bottom surface, preventing the wood from being flattened by roller pressure instead of the blades.

Probably way more info than anyone wanted, but hopefully it will help save some of that warped wood out there, that was otherwise destined for the scrap bin.

[theresa]

I've heard (never done it myself) that you wet on the warped side of the board and lie it on the warped side down outside, not in direct heat so it re-levels itself. As I have said never done it myself but read about this trick after I cut, painted and finished the project putting up with the warped board.