Thread: Hot weather problems with my timber

Hello all, new here and will get to the intro soon...Have been using search for a while with no real luck so i hope you don't mind me asking my questions...

Hot dry day here where i am and again my hot weather challenge rears its head for another year. On these days the workshop gets real hot, today its 39 in the shed and no insulation etc.

I carve jelutong, often the pieces need to be laminated together out of 2 or 3'' planks. On hot days its not uncommon for a peice to audibly crack or to warp and delaminate a join just sitting on the bench waiting its turn. I figure it's not so much the heat but the effect of the heat sucking out the moisture in the timber. It is kiln dried and is usually 12 to 15% moisture, some pieces are so dry the meter doesnt even measure it.

So to combat this, after i carve a piece i put it in a plastic bag to seal in whatever moisture is in the timber figuring that no matter how hot it gets it won't move. Is this sound? (my carvings are not sealed but stay raw timber)

I have also taken to putting my raw blanks into platic bags till ready to carve for the same reason.

Next question relates to keeping moisture in the air. I just got a fairly new evaporative (swamp) cooler secondhand to try to cool the room down and to throw some moisture back into the air, will this help?

How do you keep your timber from cracking and warping etc on hot days?

thanks
Blockman