Warped,cupped,twisted lumber. Bad sawyer or kiln?

[trees]

I had a few thousand feet of black ash sawn for me by a fellow with a new, modern,  commercial stationary band mill. He has been in business a long time, good reputation. Sawed 8/4 and 5/4 by 6, 8 and 12.
Boards looked ok when I picked them up but I didn't look at them closely.
Had them dryed in a kiln that is not at all modern. Wood fired and a little crude but the man has been doing it this way for years and mostly drys for his own flooring and trim business. And he produces very nice end product.

Well I picked up the dryed boards and they are warped, cupped, twisted and darn hard to plane. I will be able to use most of them but they sure are a bear to work with. A typical 2X12 might be cupped a quarter inch. And in 12 feet is bowed by an inch and twisted about that much as well. Not at all what I expected.

Where do you think the problem most likely came from? The sawing or  the drying?
I'm new to this and wonder what went wrong.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Trees.

[Frank_Pender]

Tree, I am sorry for your lumber results.  sure wish I knew something about the species.   It sounds as though the folks you had produce and dry you lumber have the experience behind them to handle the material, from what you tell us.  It might have something to do with the weather in your area like some of the threads have been speaking.  How did you handle the material once you got it home?  I hope not let to set in a hot/humid setting for very long.  Lumber takes an awful beating when allowed to set out for any time at all. :'(

[Sawyerfortyish]

Tree a  1/4 " cup on a2x12 or a 1" bow or twist isn't uncommon and doesn't mean it's someones falt trees have all kinds of stress that become very noticeable when being dryed especially ash and isn't the falt of the sawyer or the dryer but may be the wood it self .I have sawed thousands of feet of ash and have seen it come off my circle saw and hook around like a horse shoe from the stress in the log. So what you desribe doesn't sound all to bad just par for the coarse. Use what you can and do your best with it.

[Kevin]

I milled a poplar last winter that was twisted right off the mill.
All others were ok.
If it was twisted after the milling you should have seen it then, if it was twisted after the kiln you should have seen it when you picked it up unless it was banded.
If you took it home and just stacked it outside without banding it could have easily happened then.

[DanG]

I milled a mini-whack of cherry a couple of months ago. One log produce boards that bowed so badly, they almost missed the board return chute. I had to guide them by hand to be sure they didn't jam things up. Made me seriously consider going into the rocking chair business. I gave it up about halfway through the log, and sent it to the firewood pile. I set the boards aside, and they actually straightened up some as they dried, just laying there in the sun. :

[trees]

I brought the boards home and stacked them inside a large shed on a concrete floor. shed. it is hot and humid here the last 2 weeks. Would that really have done it?

[Kevin]

If they were fine when you placed them there my guess would be it happened after you picked them up.

[Tom]

Trees.

You are more apt to run into defects that are caused by the growh history of the tree than have defects caused by experienced personel.  I'll bet the biggest cause is the tree.  

You can mishandle wood and cause problems too, but if you and they were careful then you did all you can do.  

I read a book once (can't remember which one) that stated that one should expect as much as 60% degrade when working with hardwoods.  That's not to say that the wood is unusable.   I suppose that is one of the things that makes hardwoods so much more expensive on the retail market.  The processors have to trim and select their good boards from the 60% of their wood that cupped or bowed or twisted or split or had knots or rot or end-splits or stain or what-have-you.

Wood will move in predetermined patterns depending on how it is sawn.  Many folks will expect quartersawn wood to be straight......after all it's the best (misnomer).  Actually, vertical grain or Quarter sawn wood moves naturally to the side and usually in the direction of the bark.  This movement is called crook.  Flat sawn wood moves toward the bark in the same plane as the wide part of the board and is called bow.

Read this thread and find some of the members experiences with wood movement.

https://forestryforum.com/cgi-bin/board/YaBB.pl?board=sawmill;action=display;num=1016154799;start=14

A sawyer can sometimes saw a log to cause the wood movement to be in a direction that will make it easier to handle when it is used for building, but not always.

A Kiln operator can minimize some of the wood movement by using the correct schedules and performing Stress Relieving procedures on the load of wood, but not always.  

More likely than not, it is up to the craftsman/carpenter to make this natural, defect prone, building material do what he wants.   We forget sometimes that "defect" is a word that we assign to a living thing because it doesn't react the way "WE" want it to act.   It makes more sense sometimes to look at from the boards perspective.  The board is doing what it wants to do and it is up to us to make the alterations.

That means that we must edge crooked boards and plane bowed and cupped boards untill we have shaped them into an acceptable (to us) product. :D :D

Now, I don't mean to imply that we humans don't cause any problems.  But, sometimes we are quick to assign blame on a person when he's not at fault.  We also tend to label "fault" when there is no fault except for measuring against what we want. :P

[trees]

Thank you Tom and all. I've never worked this much with "raw " wood before. Mostly started with finished lumber. I think I may just be expecting too much.
Planed some more today and must have gotten in to the better part of the pile. Things are looking up.   And I'm also much more accustomed to making things with metal. Nice "finished" angle iron and such. Perhaps if I was used to starting with a raw ingot of iron I would be more comfortable working with rough sawn lumber.

Thanks again all. This is a really nice resource to come to.

Trees

[Tom]

Glad to have you around, Trees.  Don't run off.

What you are doing is turning yourself into a real artist.  It takes someone with a good eye and a lot of patience to work with raw materials and learn to identify the beauty in it. It's something you have to learn by doing.  Reading the grain in a rough cut piece of wood is something that you don't learn from the books.

It gives you a real feeling of accomplishment to find a beautiful board coming out of the planer, doesn't it?  Especially when hundreds of others passed it up to use something that a 3rd person determined was good.  ;D