Originally Posted by
IanW
Jake, I agree with what you said, I think many of us operate similarly. There ends up being a lot of just plain intuition & experience & trial & error (plenty of errors in my case!) in how/what wood you use. I don't disregard the science at all, it is all relevant, and helps in many ways, but it's often more in a general way, i.e. pointing at trends. It helps us decide what is likely to be good for what, or tells us why a given species is better at taking bends than another, & so on. But as John will fully appreciate, statistics are of limited use when you have a sample size of one, i.e., that lump of wood in your hand that you are trying to decide whether it will make a good chair leg or not. Given all of the factors we have to consider, such as variation within a species, grain direction, likelihood of any defects, etc., you have to fall back on your own knowledge & experience to figure out if it's likely to make a very good turned leg or a disastrous failure..... :;
Cheers,