Thread: Wood Selection in USA for a GIS

A classic example of internal stresses being released (or trying to). On small dimension stock, you can usually force your way around it. On larger size sticks, it'll you off.

Coincidentally I am experimenting with some Cypress. I had almost resigned myself to scarfing and laminating the yard from shorter stock after a failed local search to find nice 12' Douglas Fir. Then I stumbled upon some very nice looking Cypress. So I am building the yard out of it to see what happens. The stuff is inexpensive enough to play with. So far the 2"x2" has remained straight after ripping in two reversing the pieces and gluing back together. I'm adding a couple of mm to the diameter to compensate for the slightly lower strength wood.

That is good news, Simon. You'll probably be ok...keep it well sealed in epoxy so that the moisture flux isn't so much, that will help too. Normally, I wouldn't seal spars in epoxy. Here I would to keep moisture from making the wood move.

With something like chinelogs where you can spring it a little into shape and glue it down, it is okay, but you want that yard to stay dead straight from the get go.

Cheers,
Clint

This piece of doug fit literally was so full of internal stresses and checking that it blew up in my hands when I flexed it about 1mm!



So DF can be a pain too!

This is what happened to my DF port chinelog several weeks ago. 1x4 ripped in two to be scarfed, both pieces failed almost immediately.

Yup, there it is...that DF is kiln dried and when it dries that fast you get all the internal checking. When you rip it WAMMO!