fyb Posted September 22, 2007 Report Share Posted September 22, 2007 I ordered some walnut on ebay and I had the seller resaw it into 3 sets for electric drop tops. Here was a thread I made about the wood in question. Well, I got it today and it has some curve to it and the pieces aren't uniformly thick I guess I was expecting alot cause they claimed they had real specialized resaw. Well, I was wondering what I should do now. Can you stick these pieces into a drum sander like this? Can I just glue them onto my body blank and then sand? Is the curve more than some real good clamping and Titebond can handle??? Help! Good pic of the curly figure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Mailloux Posted September 22, 2007 Report Share Posted September 22, 2007 (edited) Whether they have the best resaw machine in the world is not going to do anything at all. When you expose a fresh piece of wood to the air it has a tendency to start warping. As soon as you take the wood out of the package it will start cupping. Wet the convex side lightly with water. The water is abosorbed by the wood and slowly "warps" it back flat. You may have to lightly stroke the wood with a wet/ humid rag over the course of an hour or two a few times to get it back to flat. Once flat sticker it and put some weights on it to let it acclimatise. We would need to see how cupped the wood is to know if you can still clamp it flat on the body. A few milimiters of cupping is no big deal. EDIT: Didn't see the pic originally. This looks like no big deal at all. Try to wet it anyway. If it's been sitting like this too long then it won't straighten out anymore though. Edited September 22, 2007 by Phil Mailloux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fryovanni Posted September 22, 2007 Report Share Posted September 22, 2007 What is the difference in thickness across the piece? If I remember you were having it sawn around .125-.195", how many thousandths is it off? As long as it is reasonably close you can clean it up easily with a drum sander(1/4" to 1/8" would be more of a challenge). The warp is no big deal when the wood is that thin, and most likely will be fine if you weight and sticker it as soon as you expose it to your humidity. This is how ANY wood should be treated when you first recieve it, and you should allow enough time for the wood to fully aclimate to your humidity (Time will vary with thickness). Curling like that has nothing to do with the re-sawing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fyb Posted September 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2007 What is the difference in thickness across the piece? If I remember you were having it sawn around .125-.195", how many thousandths is it off? As long as it is reasonably close you can clean it up easily with a drum sander(1/4" to 1/8" would be more of a challenge). The warp is no big deal when the wood is that thin, and most likely will be fine if you weight and sticker it as soon as you expose it to your humidity. This is how ANY wood should be treated when you first recieve it, and you should allow enough time for the wood to fully aclimate to your humidity (Time will vary with thickness). Curling like that has nothing to do with the re-sawing. I was just hoping that with their resawing ability that they claimed to have, all 6 pieces would be roughly the same thickness. I don't have calipers, but on the piece in the pic the right side is roughly 2/3 the thickness of the left and there's quite a bit of variation in the six pieces. I'm going to get some decent calipers this weekend, so I can get up some better specs. I may have just been expecting too much cause I've been used to buying pieces from StewMac and I've had very good luck there. The figure in these pieces is gorgeous so it's worth it (I hope!) Thanks for the help guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fryovanni Posted September 22, 2007 Report Share Posted September 22, 2007 What is the difference in thickness across the piece? If I remember you were having it sawn around .125-.195", how many thousandths is it off? As long as it is reasonably close you can clean it up easily with a drum sander(1/4" to 1/8" would be more of a challenge). The warp is no big deal when the wood is that thin, and most likely will be fine if you weight and sticker it as soon as you expose it to your humidity. This is how ANY wood should be treated when you first recieve it, and you should allow enough time for the wood to fully aclimate to your humidity (Time will vary with thickness). Curling like that has nothing to do with the re-sawing. I was just hoping that with their resawing ability that they claimed to have, all 6 pieces would be roughly the same thickness. I don't have calipers, but on the piece in the pic the right side is roughly 2/3 the thickness of the left and there's quite a bit of variation in the six pieces. I'm going to get some decent calipers this weekend, so I can get up some better specs. I may have just been expecting too much cause I've been used to buying pieces from StewMac and I've had very good luck there. The figure in these pieces is gorgeous so it's worth it (I hope!) Thanks for the help guys! If I understand you correctly, there is about .06" or so deviation from side to side(something like 1/8"-3/16"). That can be cleaned up pretty easy with a drum sander. You have the most trouble with a thickness sander when you can't get one reasonably flat side(at least close). FWIW; When I resaw, I do not get that much deviation. A sloppy cut for me would be more like .02" out and it would mess with my next cut so I would have to surface before making another cut. This can happen for a couple reasons. One- your fence is off or you are not feeding the piece sung to the fence. Two a board can sometimes cup because the blades heat is drying the wood on the cut face faster than the opposite face. Three- The blade is no tensioned or the guides allow for to much blade travel. I am not sure what was happening with the machine or wood, so it is hard to say. Keep in mind you bought "lumber" and had it freshly resaw, without surfacing. If you had bought ready to use figured French Walnut sets you would have paid at least three times the price(even as acoustic backs they would cost this much). The price of those sets you would buy from Stew Mac represent the added cost of drying, cutting, surfacing, and a risk of loss that they have while doing these things. The comparison is not really fair. The cupping is normal, and really no big deal(it is all about aclimation of the wood). If you paid these guys $60 an hour, plus blade expense for re-saw services(that is the going rate, for top notch cutting), and you can not get your required thickness yeild from these sets(after surfacing) then I would be mad. You can not use a freshly re-sawn piece without surfacing(at least not for our work), even with the smoothest cutting blades available. I would weight and sticker those sets(I assume you have them in sticks already, as that is the first thing you needed to do when you recieved the wood). Then in a few weeks(after they have aclimated) have them surfaced, and be sure the thickness sander that is being used is up to the accuracy requirements. Also be sure the person sanding understands they need to take light passes to clean the surfaces but maintain as much thickness as possible(also be sure they understand you want most material removed from the faces opposite the bookmatch). Peace,Rich Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted September 22, 2007 Report Share Posted September 22, 2007 Rich covered everything extremely well. The wood hasn't even acclimatised to your environment yet. Sticker and weight your 3 drop tops and go get them thicknessed in 3-4 weeks, you'll be fine. Make sure you have enough stickers to support the weight so the tops do not bend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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