OK, several of the guys here say they use air dried only lumber on their woodworking projects. No kiln used. was your Cherry AD only or did you run it through a kiln? Some of the woodworking sites I'm on say you HAVE to KD lumber before using it.
Scrounging Firewood (and other stuff)
- Thread starter mainewoods
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Yeah... the dads were sometimes fanatical! For Pine Wood Derby we were more about unique looking cars... middling results on the runs. Below is a sample. I solved the lead weight problem by using bullets.... note the .429 semi wadcutter support for the traffic cone.
The chess board car has walnut and curly maple squares... all of them made with hand saws, hand planes and a shooting board. We had fun... and the boys learned a lot about tools and woodworking. My oldest son called taking a rough cut board and turning it into something nice "Magic." The little tool totes were a project I made for my son's den's woodworking loop project. They assembled the parts... the kits were self jigging so parents' fingers were spared the application of the hammers. 
The vast majority of the wood I use for fine woodworking is air dried rough cut. It takes patience... I have a lumber shed that accumulates such stuff.
Off the top of my head I know there are varying amounts of cherry, walnut, ash, white oak and maple in there... This (dusty) knitting chest for example is white oak and walnut. Some guys like to plane off the marking gauge lines for the dovetails... me, I leave them as a tell tale sign that it's handmade. 
They didn’t have kiln dried wood 300 years ago and there’s furniture still around from that era . Never had a problem with air dried wood warping /splitting after it dried . Even kiln dried wood needs to acclimate to its environment . That’s why you never put wood flooring down straight from the box . You need to let it adjust to the relative humidity of your home .
A lot of incredible stuff was built outta wood before modern kiln drying was a thing.
Many custom guitar builders will use only air dried woods.
It's all about getting the moisture content right.
In general air dried wood will have much more natural color variation, as opposed to kd wood.
Well... there are guys who will fill the defects with black (usually) epoxy and consolidate the punky areas with CA glue. Loose bark inclusions are typically glued in place with CA also... It's a thing!Had a thing pop up on farcebook of a guy milling a black walnut log. He was ranting on how nice it was right down to the punky crotch.
When he pulled a slab off you could see the rot falling out of it. I was obligated to post a HVBW video.
I knew a guy who did a lot of furniture and he just put wood up in his garage attic for three years to dry before using it.
Here’s some air dried white oak that lives a much harder life than inside furniture 
WoodAbuser
aka WoodchuckAbuser
Many guitar builders keep their shops at 45% RH. That is what i try to keep my house at year around. Once my guitars are acclimated and adjusted they only ever go out of tune when they get new strings. After the strings are done stretching they stay in almost perfect tune between use.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas! I had a wonderful one with my family. We decided to just do stocking stuffers this year so I got a bunch of stuff like armour all, pepperettes, shave cream, etc. and it didn't cost anyone an arm or a leg. I'm off all week so now I'm looking for a project. Been unseasonably warm and now raining so to the garage I go coffee in hand!
All true... While working at Colonial Williamsburg I learned the obvious... prior to central heat and A/C the interior of buildings were never consistently dry the way they are today... As such, durable goods like furniture, doors and windows were make taking seasonal wood movement into account. This by using construction techniques that allowed for movement. For example, frames with floating panels.
Something I speculated about for many decades was the notion that wood was more stable "back then" as it was old growth. I didn't accept that... I thought that what seems stable today in old furniture, doors, etc. was more a function of the wood fatiguing over time from the seasonal movement, i.e., it "lost it's life." I cannot put my fingers on the source at the moment but researchers fairly recently came to the same conclusion... decades/centuries of movement breaks the wood down so it doesn't move as much. Have you ever noticed how dead really old (100+ years) boards feel when you work them? I won't be around long for anything I've made from air dried wood to get that dead so I built to take movement into account.
My buddies 661 and his uncles 250, the 400 stayed nice and warm in the truck.
I'm loosing hope that I'll get out with my flint lock for muzzle loader season... a lot of rain in the forecast through Friday and then I have other commitments through the end of the season. I have an in-line but it just isn't the same experience...
...and installed to expect movement!
Since we didn't do presents, we didn't need I ginormous tree so we went with a potted cedar which I planted yesterday. Us scroungers have to plant once in a while!
My Oak table up at the cabin uses 3 pieces of Oak for the top, same with the Hickory workbench I have up there.
The Oak table has a minor wood separation issue only at one end, only on one side. The Hickory workbench has separated more. Other stuff I have built does not seem to have the same issues. I think the cabin going hot and cold, and various humidity contribute to the issues.
Thankfully, I've not had any issues with the structural wood used to build the cabin. My benches, which are one piece (other than the legs) don't seem to have any issues.
The Oak table has a minor wood separation issue only at one end, only on one side. The Hickory workbench has separated more. Other stuff I have built does not seem to have the same issues. I think the cabin going hot and cold, and various humidity contribute to the issues.
Thankfully, I've not had any issues with the structural wood used to build the cabin. My benches, which are one piece (other than the legs) don't seem to have any issues.
Time to interrupt the New York Woodworkers Guild thread with some scrounge pics..
More HVWL from the hill.
More HVWL from the hill.
All true... While working at Colonial Williamsburg I learned the obvious... prior to central heat and A/C the interior of buildings were never consistently dry the way they are today... As such, durable goods like furniture, doors and windows were make taking seasonal wood movement into account. This by using construction techniques that allowed for movement. For example, frames with floating panels.
Something I speculated about for many decades was the notion that wood was more stable "back then" as it was old growth. I didn't accept that... I thought that what seems stable today in old furniture, doors, etc. was more a function of the wood fatiguing over time from the seasonal movement, i.e., it "lost it's life." I cannot put my fingers on the source at the moment but researchers fairly recently came to the same conclusion... decades/centuries of movement breaks the wood down so it doesn't move as much. Have you ever noticed how dead really old (100+ years) boards feel when you work them? I won't be around long for anything I've made from air dried wood to get that dead so I built to take movement into account.
I built a jewelry box out of a beam from a 110 year old barn, it definitely had a very "dead" quality to it.
Friend made these from a 250 year old barn in Maryland . The largest cross section had 240 growth rings so it was a sapling close to 500 years ago. Old wood always has a unique look to it.
I built a jewelry box out of a beam from a 110 year old barn, it definitely had a very "dead" quality to it.
