Thread: WIP Camphor Laurel blanket box

Will be watching with much interest Alex. I have an order for two of these for Granddaughters. Still not sure if I will make mine out of CL, or just line them with it. Are you going to seal the inside. I guess not much choice if the outside is done. I want to keep the smell.

Originally Posted by BobR

.......... Are you going to seal the inside. I guess not much choice if the outside is done. I want to keep the smell.

Bob - all 'rules' are made to be broken, especially the one that says you must apply exactly the same finish to each side of a piece of wood. This CL blanket box was finished (outside only) with D.O. and wax. It's had an annual waxing (at least once every three years ) and was made about 12-14 years ago. No splits, no warps, lid fits snugly & still plenty of aroma when you lift it. Frame & panel construction helps, but also Camphorlaurel is a pretty forgiving wood. Although some pieces will move a lot during drying, once into the average MC range, it seems to settle down & remain pretty stable.

That's been my experience, anyway - others may have different stories.

Cheers,

My experience with CL is that it's pretty well impossible to kill the smell. I'll be oiling bothesides

Sounds like the choice is mine.

CL moves a hell of a lot, always.

Finishing the inside really depends on one thing, if you are going to fill it up and rarely open it, the inside does not need to be finished, if it is going on display and it could be sometime before it it is filled, its a good idea to seal it.

Although I cannot smell CL anymore, the smell does come through regardless of if it is finished or not.

Watching someone do something while I keep on oiling and oiling and oiling...

Keep it coming Alex.

Originally Posted by Cruzi

CL moves a hell of a lot, always.

Finishing the inside really depends on one thing, if you are going to fill it up and rarely open it, the inside does not need to be finished, if it is going on display and it could be sometime before it it is filled, its a good idea to seal it.

Although I cannot smell CL anymore, the smell does come through regardless of if it is finished or not.

Cruzi - there's probably enough said already, but I'd like to make a few observations.

1. In my experience with CL, including making several intricate items with close-fitting drawers, I have not struck any problems that I would not expect in other cabinet-grade woods. Silver Ash, for example, moves quite a bit more than CL - I'm typing this over a sticking drawer (S.A sides in a Qld. Maple carcase) that has given me more trouble than any CL piece I've ever made. However, because CL is a tree that is often very twisted, you do need to select pieces from straight sections of the tree that are free of reaction wood if you want predictable movement. That's not always easy, to do, of course, unless you harvest & process your own CL.

2. Whatever wood you work with, you have to accept that it moves, & design accordingly. Frame & panel is a pretty forgiving design, and has stood the test of time. Until pretty recently, almost no-one bothered to finish inside furniture, and a lot of old pieces are still intact after hundreds of moisture cycles.

3. Within a short time, any CL piece I have made & finished (with a variety of finishes) has lost any external aroma, & just as well as I don't think I'd like to live in a room redolent with camphor all the time. But then even raw wood stacked under the house loses a lot of its whiff after some months (until planed or sawn), so I really don't know how much is due to finish & how much to natural attrition. Inside the drawers or cupboards is a different story, and all have kept their aroma for 20 plus years, so far. Maybe coating the inside will actually prolong the smell, because it does go away eventually, though not sure how long it takes (& of course probably depends on factors such as how often it's opend & how well-fitted lids & doors are). I've got CL drawer bottoms, which are still strong after 20-plus years. But SWMBO has an old dovetailed '6-board' CL chest, >80 years old, that is quite dead inside. In fact I didn't know it was CL for sure (a very dark old thing) until I tried to sand off a mark on the inside, and got a good whiff of camphor - at least I think it was the wood & not the residue of mothballs.....

So whether to coat or not is a matter of personal preference & how much faith you have in the integrity of your design, & whether or not you believe coating the insides will compensate for fundamental design flaws.

Cheers,

I make lots of stuff from camphor everyday, regardless of how camphor ( and agreed, most woods) move it has not caused problems, only because movement is designed in.
Choosing a straight grained piece of camphor is a lovely idea, but you have to make camphor objects from the same tree, otherwise there is too much variation in colour and grain.
Out of all the timbers worked here, red cedar, tallowood, blackwood, ash, teak rosewood, red bean etc, etc, camphor moves the quickest and the most.

Being self congratulatory about "close fitting" objects, think again. We really have to consider EMC differences, EMC here in summer is 17%, in spring it can go as low as 9%, so any timber, but especially camphor, moves a lot. So what works in the workshop may not work in Brisvegas or Sydney or Darwin, unless you have designed it in.

Have several items in Sydney and Melbourne and the owners are happy, not bad considering the 8-10% EMC difference.

Sealing ( and finishing) timber does not stop movement, it slows it down, and by only sealing the inside of chests and finishing the outside, people are still smelling camphor years later inside chests.

Sealing has nothing to do with fundamental design flaws but an understanding of the timber and how to deal with its characteristics.

My assumption is that the CL will move, which is why I'm doing it as frame & panel. I've never found that finishing in any way will 'seal' the wood. Perhaps using one of the pour-on finishes would, I've never tried it.
I've always assumed that any wood will move, just some more than others.

Cruzi - I didn't mean to sound self-congratulatory - I certainly don't set myself up as an oracle on any subject!

All I was trying to do was point out that CL is not a hugely unstabe wood in the scheme of things. Its shrinkage figures of 2% radial & 5% tangential are moderate (and in fact very similar to red cedar (2% & 4% respectively). Both woods, being soft, are fairly forgiving anyway.

I think we are in close agreement that no finish, all of which which only slow moisture movement as you rightly point out, is a substitute for structural design.

That was really the point, & I apologise if I sounded pompous.
Cheers,

My apologies as well, have communication and diplomacy difficulties.

The figures on camphor are probably not that accurate, according to one source (exactly which one eludes me just now) camphor in Australia is a new species every 9 years, with about the only resemblance it holds to the original Chinese import being the smell now.

A rule of thumb with it is that the darker it is, the heavier and harder it is, with great variation from tree to tree.

Originally Posted by Cruzi

.......with great variation from tree to tree.

Yes, I can certainly agree with that!

And I agree that it's not a good idea to put too much faith in a set of figures that are probably derived from a relatively small sample. Added to that, you have locality & individual tree variations. It's a bit of an imprecise science.

Cheers,

Sorry Alex. I think I caused your thread to be hijacked. Do you have an update on the project.

Didn't do any work on it over the weekend. Finished cutting the tenons and trimming the legs to length.