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Snips... ;-)My First Galoot Project
Jeff, I said worse than that when I first set foot on these shores. One of my first Galoot projects was a trestle style dining table out of pine. I bought clear pine from a local timber yard and glued up a top of 3 12" x 2" boards. I put bread board ends across the ends and fastened them with a tongue and groove and 3 1/2" dowels, 1 in the centre of each board end. The table was finished with 10 coats of hand rubbed polyurethane over a dark walnut oil stain. I moved it into my flat in the middle of winter. 2 nights later I was awakened by 2 huge bangs and a crash. On investigating the noise I found the breadboard ends laying on the hardwood floor and on looking closer saw that all 3 dowels at each end had been cleanly sheared. They were 1/2" maple dowels Jeff. Anyway, the British bulldog in me took over and I replaced the dowels with loose tenons 3" long x 11/2" wide x 1/2" thick and glued the ends on with a powdered resin glue (like Cascamite). All was well until the next summer when the top was 1" wider than the length of the breadboard ends. I left it alone for about 4 years and finally the ends fell off again. All the glue was still good but the pine had sheared along the glue lines and only the centre tenon was whole. At this time I started to do some research and found out the pine was at the normal lumber yard M/C of around 25% when I bought it! Kiln dried lumber was unheard of. Anyway the table got totally stripped and the ends were re-attached with just 1 glued loose centre tenon and then refinished. Now after 31 years there is still seasonal movement of around 3/8" total. That's 3/8" over a 34" width every spring and autumn. I don't have or want air conditioning so I guess it will do this for ever. To give you some science, between April and August around the Great Lakes we often get 100% humidity with 100 deg. F temperatures sometimes for days at a time. In the winter my house is heated to 70 deg. F and the interior humidity level is around 40-60%. I have solid pine 5 panel interior doors and some of them have cracks in the panels as much as 3/8" wide in the winter because the panels are stuck with paint. The residential housing market has moved entirely to horrible fake hollow core panel doors and as I said on the list the front and back doors are nearly all insulated steel doors now. It doesn't bode well for future joiners. We have plastic windows, and plastic clapboard, and plastic moldings, and steel doors, Jeff! It ain't nice! Cheers, |
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