Choosing Boards
I wrote an article for the recent issue of Fine Woodworking about getting rived parts from boards. I’m thankful to Jon Binzen for going out on a limb with me to help bridge the gap between logs and boards for the readers. (ugh, this is what happens when you give up caffeine). But, a magazine article is still just a few pages, so I thought I’d show this segment of my last class to help fill in some of the blanks on finding a board that will work well with the process. I mostly work with ash and other ring porous hardwoods for this process. Splitting these species works great to reveal the twist in the radial plane, but species that don’t split well, such as cherry or walnut, need a different treatment. For those, it’s best to shave the edge of the board with a drawknife to find the radial plane as I show in the article. Another option is to saw the board down the middle and then use the drawknife on the edge of the saw cut to find the path of the radial twist.
The only reason to follow these steps is if you are trying to get rived parts from boards. Obviously plenty of parts can just be sawn from boards, machined, bent and put into furniture, but if you want the benefits of green wood but don’t have access, this method will help you get there.
This is the best explanation of understanding grain in a board I have ever read or listened to. One of my favorite aspects of woodworking is the never ending amount of knowledge one can learn. I consider myself very capable of reading a board for furniture parts, okay enough for chair parts, and I still smacked myself on the forehead when you showed the end grain pieces with the radial lines drawn. So much of my personal experience clarified in one moment and I now have a much deeper understanding of what’s going with the wood I am working. Thank you for sharing!
What a great companion piece to the article. Thanks for sharing this!