# cutting warped wood on the TS



## chippin-in (Dec 22, 2011)

After gluing my boards together I found them to be a little off. Nothing huge, but enough cause me concern. I already had them planed to my desired thickness and once glued were too wide to joint or plane. Maybe I should have glued them first then hand planed. But I may have been off on the thickness of each edge. 

Anyway, the question I want to ask is, If you have boards that are slightly warped/bowed, should you push them flat thru the cut or just cut them as they are? 

I pushed them flat believing I would be able to clamp them closed at the edge when joining them. Was this the right choice?

The edges are mitered, but I will also be using dovetail splines for additional holding and looks.

I know in a perfect world there would be perfectly flat boards, but what if they are not?

Thanks for your help

Robert


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## chippin-in (Dec 22, 2011)

Heres what I got so far on the hope chest. Not glued yet. Sorry, I got to resize the pics. They were huge.

[attachment=761][attachment=760][attachment=759]


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## Kevin (Dec 23, 2011)

It's important to know if the terms you're using are correct. Based on this statement . . . 



chippin-in said:


> ...
> 
> I pushed them flat believing I would be able to clamp them closed at the edge when joining them. Was this the right choice?



... it sounds like you're referring to _crook_. Crook is the easiest of all to deal with as long as the board doesn't have another type of defect in addition to crook. 

"Warp" is used in a general way in the industry and it is correct, but _warp_ is also a specific type of "warpage". It can lead to much confusion which is why I prefer the other term for the specific definition of _warp_, which is _twist_. _Bow_ is another type of warpage. _Cup_ is self-explanatory so there you have the four basic types of "warp".



Bow
Twist (a.k.a. _warp_)
Cup
Crook

There is also _kink_ but it's less common and rarely used in discussion. So if your board faces were flat, you didn't have twist, bow, or cupping you only had _crook_. Crook is curved edges of the boards so if that's what you're referring to then yes just push the panel through and remove the curved edges on each side of the panel. I can explain how to easily do this (two common ways) if that's all you're dealing with. If you made the panel with boards that had a great deal of crook they can tear apart at the glue line or in weaker areas in the board. If they don't tear apart, the panel can become twisted, bowed, cupped, or any combination thereof to try and relieve the stress. 

You can straight-line flat boards that are highly crooked, and put a straight edge along the edges again and see that they have re-crooked to a lesser degree. The narrower the boards, and the more they are crooked, the more they tend to do this to proportional degrees. 

When gluing up panels, it's imperative to use boards that are as close to flat, straight, and square as possible. This means the stress has been removed from each board prior to machining. You can still use boards with some small amount of stress in them, but it depends on what type of stress they have and how they'll be used. Twist is the worst type of warp of all, in my book. 

I didn't address your question I realize, but I'm not real sure what type of warpage you're referring to. Is it only crook, or some other type/combination? 




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## chippin-in (Dec 23, 2011)

Ill take some pics and post them in a day or so.

Thanks
Robert


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## chippin-in (Dec 25, 2011)

heres a pic of the worst one.
[attachment=782]


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