Thread: Straightening aged warped jarrah floorboards

If you need shorter lengths for parts of your box, you may be able to cut sections that are short enough that the twist in each is manageable.

No idea if soaking and weighting would help.
Someone else will certainly have a better idea.

Welcome to the forum...

Russ

Hi
If your timber is warped now you will not magically be able to straighten them by wet and clamping. Floorboards are notorious for warping when they have been removed from the joist. Remember they have been fixed in this position for years and once 'released' bounce back to their natural shape.
My only advice is to machine out the warp to straighten if it is possible and remember there could be hidden/broken nails embedded in the timber.
Hope that helps
Kevin

Just confirming that soaking and clamping won't work.
Cutting into boards won't work either.
You might be able to rip the boards into shorter narrower strips and machine them flat using a planer/thicknesser.

Working with warped boards can be an exercise in frustration.
38 years ago I decided to make my son's cot.
Being a bit financially stretched at the time I ended up buying some cheap pine from a salvage yard.
The timber was only "slightly" warped but I figured the pieces were big enough to flatten by machining.
I generated several DC bags of sawdust and still could not get them flat but I persisted with the build and eventually gave up in frustration.
By now my some was 5 months old so I went and bought straight timber and completed the project within a couple of weeks.

Welcome to the Forum, Julie.

You must be careful watching European and American videos as their timbers tend to be much softer than we routinely use in Australia. And some of our favourites have notably hornery grain! Harder timbers fight you harder!

Janka.jpg

I would suggest that you use the straight pieces of jarrah for the longer pieces in your box/seat, and then cut needed shorter pieces from the flatter sections of your twisted boards. Each piece should then have only a small amount of twist to work with.

You can try to salvage the more twisted stuff. If you have, say, 25mm twist in a 3 metre board, then, on average, you will have only 5mm twist in each 600mm sector. Cut your board to length plus 50mm or so, and then set to eliminating the twist. Google "planing twisted boards" and you should get many hits for both hand and machine planing.

Also have a look at Derek's website:
In The Woodshop

especially this item:
Preparing a board without a thicknesser-planer-jointer