Planer problem

[Paul_H]

I had a bit of a puzzler today.
A few weeks back,I ran some 2x12 t&g for a guy that is doing a timber frame house.I tried to talk him into kiln drying the wood(Fir) down to at least 10% mc.

He declined because it was airdryed(it was his own wood).I checked the wood and it was at an average of 20%.We ran it and he stacked it in the house for a couple of weeks.
I went by today and he said that there is a problem with the planer.The wood is flat grain and a lot of the boards measure 11" across the face on one end,and 10 7/8 on the other end in 12' lengths.And,he said,"the planer has put a bit of crook in the boards as well".
The boards are around 13-14% mc now.
I explained that if the boards had slight crook in them to begin with,the planer will follow the crook if I load it the right way,if not,they would be narrow in the middle.

The planer has an 8' fence with 2 really good side pressure rollers,and the heads are fixed.

I came home and checked some 1x8 flooring I had done after kd- ing
down to 7% first. They are bang on the money on both ends.

Is it possible that the boards are shrinking inconsistently?

Or does the planer have a problem with 2x12 s ?

The thickness is consistent at 1 5/8 " but the grain is radial(?)

Any ideas?

[HORSELOGGER]

My first thought... how do you know that they were accurate at the full length before you ran them? My straight line rip is getting tired ( chain and race not glue line ) but it is fine for a bustin saw for flooring blanks. However... if the piece is a little under size at one end or the other it shows up as a pistol grip snipe on the very end of the piece, groove side. Do the pieces of fir look like they have been fully machined on the sides?

[Paul_H]

 HORSELOGGER,
Yes, they have all been fully machined the whole length.The way the setup is,if the boards were under width,the tongue wouldn't be fully finished.The groove side is always completed.But in this case,there were no skips on the tongue side.

The side heads on the planer are opposite each other and the fence is setup dead true.

The finished,flat surface was set to 11" in width,and that's what is really puzzling,that it could be 1/8" under on one end but still be finished.

I don't want to grasp at straws if it is a planer problem,but I just wonder if the wood was piled in the house with heat blowing on one end,would that explain the narrower width?

Thanks for the help.

[HORSELOGGER]

Paul, I have zero experience with fir , but I wonder... would that much shrinkage be considered normal for fir lumber coming down from 20%? Can you tell if it is all the same end as it went thru the planer? Can you take a 2x 12 of your own and zing it through, checking before and after? I have about done cried after being bested ( temporarily ) by my moulder!

[Paul_H]

That's the stage I'm at right now :D

I am waiting for the last guy I did 1x6 flooring for,to get home tonight.We delivered it last Thursday and and I'm hoping that it is still stacked in a pile so I can check it with the tape measure.
I can't tell if all the ends were the same out of the planer because the t&g are centered and chances are they were flipped around when they unloaded :-/

On the shrinkage in Fir,it's normal for a 1x6 flat grain to be @ 5 1/2- 5 3/4 when it is dried down to 7%.

He wants me to run another dozen pieces to finish the job so we'll be able to keep a better eye on things.

[Paul_H]

I got ahold of Tom tonight.He is the guy that we ran the 1x6 flooring for last Thursday.While we were on the phone,he measured a bunch of the 12' 1x6 pieces of flooring

He said that they were all consistent both ends and that there was no problems with the 1x8 we did before that either.

The last runs we did were all t&g. First the 1x8 for Tom,then the 2x12 for the timberframe,and then 1x6 for Tom.

The 1x6" and 1x8" were kiln dried.
I feel a little better but will have to try some more 2x12's to make sure.

[Frank_Pender]

Paul, did every board have that same variation or just some.  If some, I would check the grain pattern and see what if any similarity ther might be tohelp determine the issue.  

  My suspicion is that the lumber dried from the 20% to the lessor % after you processed it through the planer / shaper. How much did you remove for thickness asa well as width.  When you removed the addition fibor you opened the lumber for more and deeper drying to occur.  I do not believe it had anything to do with the dimension other than the thickness influencing the air drying process your customer put his planks through, initially.

  Keep us informed of how it goes, please.

[beenthere]

My suspicion would be a change in moisture content caused the difference, not the planer (4 head moulder?).  I suspect one end of these boards was either a higher moisture content than the other end before planing, or that the narrow end dried out more than the other end after planing. You could do some measuring of moisture content with the finished boards to check out the difference now. This is just a suspicion, but seems it is one that could explain machining to a fixed width (complete tongue and grooves) and having a difference of 1/8" show up later on. That width change is probably not a very big change in moisture content for those widths.

In addition, I would check to see if the narrower width is always the small (or large) diameter end of the log the 12' boards came from, by looking at the annual ring structure. Maybe the wood characteristics that change with the height in the tree cause more shrinkage (or less) in width with a change in moisture content. Just a wild thought.

[Norm]

My guess (for what it's worth) is that the wood was not consistent in moisture level. If you use a pinless meter or don't drive the pins deep enough all you get is the outer shell level. Since it was air dried it can be different from one end to the other depending on how it was stacked (one end towards more air flow). 20% is pretty high for air dried lumber especially 8/4.

[Paul_H]

I kept mulling it over last night and was thinking that it must be the way it was stacked and dried in the house.

 Frank,beenthere,and Norm.After reading your posts it got me thinking about something.

We had to put the job off because it was bitter cold and had to wait until the temperature got up closer to 32 F.

I went by when they were loading the lumber on to the trailer,and we had to break the rows free because they were frozen together.I told the guy that if he had a heated shop to park the trailer for a day or two,we could run it through the planer then.
He didn't have a shop,so he put a couple of tarps over the load and had a big propane blower set up about 6' from the back of the load and blew the hot air underneath toward the front.
He had that setup and blowing on and off for a couple of days before we planed it.

Thank you all for the help on this.I'm not going to run green lumber anymore,unless it is for an outside deck.

[East_West_Dan]

That seems like the safest plan Paul. Too many times I've used the customers air dried material and it's come back to haunt me and then I look bad. A client just brought me some beautiful 12/4 old growth redwood water tank stock to make an entry door for his new house. Oh yeah it's "dry". Full of wet pockets.It's up in the attic of the shop for a while.   Good luck.

Dan  

[etat]

 redwood water tank stock, got me to thinking about a program I saw one time.  In new york on top of the skyscrapers redwood was, I don't know about now, the prefered material  to use to make the watertanks.  There were only either one, or two familys  businesses that had the knowhow to construct these tanks.  I believe the program said they were still in business.  

[East_West_Dan]

Your right cktate.Before I skipped town and moved west I was looking into recycling those tanks in New York and contacted one of those companies. The problem was that when they dismantled them they had to cut the staves into short pieces to get them down the elevators! The owner said the lumber was in pretty poor shape by the time they decided to remove them.They were sure odd looking on top of the concrete and steel buildings.

Dan