Warped Wood

[thewrathofraf]

I bought some body blanks off ebay for my neck through about a month ago. Any way, one of the blanks has warped. I suppose the guy didnt dry it as well as he said to have. So now I have an alder body blank thats warped. I used the search for a few things and couldnt find an answer to my question. First...can I still use the blank? would it be best to just go to Home Depot and use their planer to straighten it out? Also how can I prevent the wood form warping again later on? Thanks for any advice.

-RAF

[Lietuvis]

It doesn't REALLY matter if you don't care about how the guitar will look and feel. Building the guitar, you would be able to work around it.

[doug]

You might do well to buy another from a different source, and set the one you have aside for a long while to see if it will continue warping. Considering the overall time and hardware expenditure building the whole guitar, it might be your best bet for now. You'll end up with a blank for your next project.

Hopefully it's warped perpendicular to the grain. If it's a single block body blank you could rip it lengthwise and glue it back together with the grain "arch" oposing one another. Once you do some basic flattening proceed to create the body and work out the rest of the uneven areas as you go. Again, I strongly suggest you sit on that piece for a long while instead.

-Doug

[Mattia]

I wouldn't be too quick to blame the seller, honestly. The blank travelled through the mail (who knows what conditions) and unless you stickered and weighted it and left it alone for at least 2 weeks, better a month or so, the joke's on you.

Wood is hygroscopic, and there's no guarantee kiln dried, relatively 'fresh' wood (the older it is, the more stable wood seems to get) will go through the mail system, go through who knows what kinds of humidity/temperature swings, and end up in an environment that might be very different to the one it came from. Each board reacts differently, too.

It's thick, so I don't think heating/forcing flat will work. Probably best to sticker, weight it, leave it alone for a couple of weeks. Then let it 'out', leave it alone for another, and if it doesn't move, go have it (and its matching buddy) planed flat, and then sticker/weight them AGAIN until you have to use them, at least another 2 weeks. If there are stresses inherent to the board, the planing won't work too well, but stickering and weighting should hopefully let things acclimatize properly.

Wood does this from time to time. It's the less fun part of working with a natural material. You can also minimize warp caused by temp/humidity shifts by using quartersawn wood wherever possible.