I posted an updated video showing what happens after they dry again. We continue the experiment to see if we can get them to dry straight. You can watch that video here. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rs6Vjclemby9hqM.html

thank you for being classy and not doing the shock value click bait thumbnail - it is refreshing

Well, timber shrinks most around the growth rings and least radially form the center of the log. This means that as timber dries, there is compression towards the centre and tension around the rings. This Tension is why logs split perpenducular to the growth rings. It is also the reason that logs are milled before they begin to dry out. Soaking the timber simply rehydrates it, which is why it returns to the flat & straight condition of the fresh sawn timber. However, as it dries and seasons, it will undergo the same stresses that caused it to warp the 1st time. If you use the timber before then, or hold it very firmly, this resists & limits the warping, but it won't eliminate it, because stress will allways be generated within the timber as it dries. You can however alleviate the stress with heat, because this softens the Lignans that bind the fibres together. This is why you can bend timber for applications like ship & boat building, fishing net construction, bent wood furnature etc. The Ancient Eqyptians did this to make their light weight fast war charriots. Bent wood is usually done with steam, because that is an easy way to control heat without burning the timber, but it is really the heat that is important, not the steam. It should be noted that it is more important to heat the inside surface of a bend as the fibres themeslves are not elastic & will not stretch on the outside of the bend but compress on the inside of the bend.

I'm not sure how interested in your channel I am going to be, but your disdain for sensationalism has won you a new subscriber. 🙂

I am 71 years old and I was shown by father in law when I was in my 20's to , what he called, strip stacking wet lumber. He would take scrap lumber and cut 1/4" thick strips about 1/2 to 1" wide and place the strips between each board as you stack it for storage. I have used boards that had been stacked this way for years and is was usually as straighy as when is was stacked. I still use this today.

Wow. Perfect. We should always remember that Nature always is the best helper! Thanks for the reminder. These deck boards that you used for the experiment should be used not for fine furniture (like you said) but for deck boards where they're screwed down every few feet or so.

Many years ago, in shop class, a had created a 3-foot diameter glue-up and finished the top and outer edge. We were letting it dry over a long weekend, before finishing the bottom. Unfortunately, a huge rain partially flooded the shop. While my project was out of the water, the humidity turned it into the world's largest potato chip. We clamped it to a bench and covered it in wet rags for a couple of days, then let it dry thoroughly. It came out almost perfectly flat and has remained so for about 45 years.

I think it may be a species related thing because I used to work at a building supply store and I bought a lot of kull lumber that was twisted like this. We picked this out and re-banded it very tightly and over the period of about six months it would straighten out, as it was set out in the weather. I was able to purchase it at a pretty good employee discounted rate. I used this material in my home for replacing floor joists, ceiling joist, and even walls. I would say I got about an 85% recovery rate from the material. I did not notice any twisting or warping later on. This was all spruce.

It’s called clickbait. In order for content creators (KZfaqrs) to get clicks is with the thumbnails and headlines to be “Shocking”. It’s KZfaq’ s algorithm :( Thanks for being real and not misleading 😊

would like to see a follow up on these boards

My Austrian grandfather had a love-hate relationship with a local lumber yard. After WWII, when cash was in short supply, the lumber yard owner would barter. If you brought him two logs, he would saw both, give you the lumber from one, and keep the other lumber to sell. My grandfather insisted that the lumber yard owner would always keep the straighter lumber, because he could tell before sawing it which log's lumber would warp more, something my grandfather never figured out. 😄

Thank for no mindless babbling! 😁 AND thanks for making this video! I will be searching for a follow-up to this experiment!!!

We always used a board stretcher to straighten them out. Also came in handy if your cut was a little short. 🤫

I've always either pinned them into the straight while still wet (which obviously doesn't work for any important structure whatsoever) or I've clamped them to straight lumber and let them dry about three times longer than my longest guess. My most dramatic success was a pressure-treated 4x4 I got off the cull cart at Home Depot. It was severely crowned; you could have bounced on it like a trampoline. I leaned it up in the shower under hot water for about 40 minutes and then clamped it to a 6x6 timber for three days. (This was on a time crunch or I would have soaked it in cold water in the tub for a whole day and then clamped it for between 2 weeks and a month.) When I unclamped it, the crown was about 90% corrected. From there, since I was using it as a cross brace under sagging floor joists, I turned the crown up, did my jacking/bracing on the ends and sank a structural lag through the center into the joist above. That was three years ago and the joists above have kept the corrected height without any sign of sagging, warping or bowing on my cross brace.

I very much like the non-sensationalist style of video. Thank you for that, on top of the information. You're a credit to humanity as far as I'm concerned.

Good Content, and Thank You for NOT buying into the KZfaq Silly-ness! Keep Up The Good Work!

I chainsaw milled quite a bit and did wood work 40+ years, never found a method to stop the movement or wood. We have all seen images of wood grain orientation in a log and how the wood reacts when cut depending on where it is in the log. The wood is going to do what it does, shrinkage is going to happen and the accompanying stresses will continue to cause you problems when you cut and work it. The only thing that works for me is to saw through the stress areas, rip the boards or otherwise physically cut through the lines of stress. It is the way of wood, gotta live with it. Nice video, enjoyed it much.

Thanks for staying in reality and keeping your thumbnails down to earth

I had a new pair of work boots many years ago and they where awful. Blisters on blisters I was almost ready to give up. Then spoke with a old cobbler and he told me to soak them in water (inside and out) for a day. Then drain and slather the outside of the boot in oil (mink or good boot oil) I don't remember. Set boots outside (not in direct sun) for a couple days. Boots can only get rid of water from inside (which pulls the oil in). Ended up being the best feeling / fitting boots I ever owned (logger and construction worker). You might try the idea on wood.

Your video was refreshing. No 'shocking' or 'your not gonna believe!' hype. Plainly stated the issue, what was suggested, & the result. Subscribed.

Thats why manufactures steam the boards to straighten or make curves. Afterwards, letting the boards dry to maintain that same shape.

Considering the cost of lumber these days, I for one, appreciate you donation to my edification. I learned something new today and it may be very applicable. I recently inherent an old workbench from a neighbor. I brought it into my yard, and kept it covered for a time but eventually got exposed to the elements and caused some serious cupping. I’m not sure it this method would work in this instance with just water, or if I would need to employ clamps in in addition to the wetting of the wood, but based on this, it certainly seems worth a try.

That's fun. And thanks for not doing that silly click-bait stuff. You're right good as you are.

I liked and subscribed solely because this fella refuses to be click bait.

That mold is also called "Blue Johning" or Blue John. Many inspectors will make you remove blue johned lumber in interiors. Something you can look out for is that one board you held up and said "just look at this" .. I saw that a knot or limb went all the way across the board in both places where it was bucked and warped(that'll do it every time) A really time consuming method but effective in limiting warping is quarter sawing. But like I said, it's labor intensive and wastes a lot of lumber. It does make beautiful grain or tiger stripe lumber., common in guitar making and very desirable in certain applications. I do like your approach, simple and to the point.

I appreciate the lack of caps and wierd faces in your video!

You might consider how traditional wood boat builders routinely and deliberately wetted or steamed planks to fit twisted and bent spaces on the hull. Where the bends and twists were most pronounced, good screws/bolts kept the planks in place, even when the boats spent a lot of time on land drying out. Always be conscious of your planks’ intended usage and it’s exposure to atmospheric moisture or bulk water. Planks bend toward the dry and away from the wet.

Thank you for not patronizing us with silly sensational influencer crap

If you strap them all together and let them dry naturally, they should end up remaining straight when you unstrap them. Also, as you said, you can immediately put them into a project so that they dry a fixed in place. They should stay straight. I've done many of decks in my life and You can use most boards that are somewhat warped as long as they get screwed into place wet. Doesn't always work, but it's better than not trying.

Pine will move with the humidity for years. But, pine is also easy to lock into place. If you want them to dry and be straight, you should weight them and put them in a hot house or drying shed. They will stay mostly straight until they have humidity to start the bending again. You are fortunate to have ponderosa pine where you are. It is superior to most other pine/soft wood building material.

I appreciate the NON-ANTIC approach. New sub.

I subscribed because there is no mindless sensationalism. Just information, which very welcome

When you Said, I like it here in reality...love it two thumbs up for that line

Thanks for this! Dry them with noggins, stacked. Should keep em straight

Those look like pretty nice propellers.

Hell! That's Home Depot's finest boards!

I can't see the surprise! It was wet when alive and rehydrating it mimics the live state. Removing moisture causes new tension balance in the cellulose walls = new shape.

I immediatly liked and subscribed when you stated you wouldn't do the silly Click bait nonsense. I think that makes you a great KZfaqr. Thanks

I agree with you about the way some channels use hyperbole in their titles. I block them because they seldom provide useful content. You, on the other hand are different. Subscribed

You may not have the flash thumbnails and the shocked facial expressions, but you're the only video I can find with practical advice on how to straighten lumber.

Very interesting and informative video. Thank you for posting. I'll keep watch for any follow up to this video.

Quarter sawn lumber is the best.

Thank you for not doing the clickbait face on your thumbnails. Keep it real. ❤

Thank you for not selling out to the clickbait crowd.

Love the tip. Glad you don't do the "shocking results" title and shocked expression on the thumbnail. Thanks for that. I hate those fake clickbait vids.

Refreshing to see a normal video, keep it up!

Thank you for skipping the shocking explosion filled thumbnail. And no heavy metal intro music with morning shock-jock lighting bolts and electric guitar riffs…well done sir.

Very interesting information. Thank you for sharing.

Good job man!!! Thanks for getting back to me!. I like where you live. I live in the red woods and that is so nice wood to work with. I have a friend that mills it I get ruff sowed 6 1/4" x2 1/2 hart it is butful and nice to work with!!. I hold all kinds of stuff out of it. My name is joey I am 63 and gong strong I don't know any other way!!

Two things: First - I love your background. I honestly thought it was a green screen because the colors from the image looks so vivid and crisp. If I'm wrong, you have a beautiful yard. Second - This is the best video I've come across on dealing with bent/crooked lumber. I asked my boss to get me a 4x8 sheet of 3/4 plywood for a project and the Home Depot worker decided to give us a board so crooked that you could make boomerangs out of them. It's still in the shop collecting dust, 6 months later, because I hadn't figured out how to straighten it back. I'm going to try this method.

Thanks for the great video! I inherited a wood straightening press from my uncle. It is made up of two 4 by 4s, and is 1 meter (39 inches) wide. The lower 4x4 has two 1 inch diameter threaded studs about 4 1/2 inches from either end fixed into it. The upper 4x4 has 2 corresponding holes in it, which have a 1/16 inch steel plate on the upper part. 2 bolts are screwed down to apply pressure. I get the plank I want to straighten and place wet rags all over the plank in question for 3 days. I then remove the rags and place one end of the plank with about 1 ft of it protruding from the "rear" side of the press. And then I attach a makeshift press: 2 4x4s with their corresponding nuts and washers about 1 ft from the opposite end of the plank. I go tightening all 4 bolts gradually over the course of 4 to 6 hours (I play it by ear). And then I wait until the straightened plank dries out. I have done this quite a number of times over the last 30 years and it has always worked. PS: Space permitting, this process should be done in the same room where the plank is going to be used: changes in the relative humidity between the workshop and the room where the plank is going to be used could result in warping. Kudos for the video! Keep up the great work

lol I can appreciate that you like it here in reality. Damn refreshing.

So I thought I'd reply with something other than steak. I'm a novice woodworker - so novice that I dunno if I could even call myself a woodworker - but at the community wood shop I go to, they tell me that one thing you can do with warped boards is to cut them which will take the tension off and that they may even straighten out a bit if you do. Here are the steps they said I should take: 1 - Cut down the length of the board with a ripper blade. 2 - Run the edges of both halves through a jointer to make the edges flat. 3 - Flip one board over so their grains run opposite to each other. 4 - Glue the boards (flat edge to flat edge against each other) together and clamp. 5 - Then after the glue's dry, you do the following: 1 - Run the face through the jointer to get it flat. 2 - Run it through the jointer to give it a flat edge. 3 - Run it through the planer to give the non jointered side a flat surface. 4 - Run it through the table saw to the width you want your piece to be.

“That’s probably something I’ll end up editing out.” 😂 Glad you didn’t!

I have a bunch of cedar fence pickets I gotta try this!

Proper stickering and stacking with extra mass above helps a lot, but definitely isn't gonna stop everything. 4/4 material is always the hardest to keep flat, and knotty wood is also much more likely to warp in drying since the grain structure has so many changes. It's much easier to deal with bow than any other form of warping. Twist is nearly impossible to remove without further milling. Essentially what you have to do to "permanently" flatten the piece is bend it in the opposite direction of its natural warp while it goes through it's entire drying process -- so for a piece that's twisted, you'd have to stack it twisted in the opposite direction and then let it dry. This will cause the compression shrinkage of the fibers to reach a new equilibrium and the board should come out much flatter. But it's a lot of work for very little reward, especially in pine. You can also do this with dry wood that is bowed. Place it on a pair of sawhorses or something so that the bow faces upward. Place weight on the center until it bows in the opposite direction about half as far as the natural bow. Let it sit overnight, remove the weight and check it. This will slowly compress the fibers on the convex side and help pull it back to flat.

I used this method one time and it works

Thanks for sharing your experience! I lived in Oregon and never had warped boards ever but they did get moldy . Now I’m down in the desert of Arizona and no more mold . However I have such a problem with the warping . Every which way you can imagine kinda humerus if if weren’t so expensive. I found out use them right away. Better quality wood isn’t so much of a problem . An issue here is keeping them wet or damp once the warping occurs and then keeping them from drying out again. So back to my first conclusion about using them right away. Thanks again for sharing .

Wow! That's a nice trick. I've never seen this before. Thanks.

Good points in the comments. Sealing the ends should help also. Anchor Seal is used by many, but I understand that house paint works too.

1:28 This attitude get's my thumbs up.

Do want you do brother, your doing great!

Thanks for the video. I'd take what nature gives me. Be grateful to nature. Most things we do are pure waste of time. In the bigger scheme of things, they don't matter.

Great video thank you for sharing!

I think the only for sure solution would be to mill over-sized, dry to moisture content of expected future environment, then plane and joint the flatness into it by removing stock. Certain parts shrink more than others, and there little we can do about it!

I stack my firewood the same way, slanted stack under weighted metal roofing. Settled on this method after several others didn't work. Keeps wood dry for years.

Thanks brother! Great video.

I would try waxing the ends of the lumber. If you look closely at a lot of store bought lumber this is what they do, as the end grain is where the wood absorbs and breathes the most. It also aids in keeping the ends from splitting.

I had a few treated lumber planks on my deck I built 20 years ago that just didn't want to be a deck plank. I think they wanted to be a hockey stick or something like that. They were straight enough when I screwed them down with stainless steel deck screws, but over a couple years they curled up on one end and snapped the screws. When I refastened them with more heavier screws, nails etc, the ends of the boards would just pop up and snap those too. Also I made all the gaps and joints tight and perfect when I built the thing and today all the gaps and joints across the entire deck are completely out the window. Keep in mind this deck was built with all straight good looking lumber when I made the cuts and put it together. I rejected any board that looked warped when I purchased the lumber. But a few years of sun and weather made everything go crazy. Next time I will use plastic planks.

I appreciate your reality.

Thank you for not going moronic sensational. There's too much of that around already.

You're HILARIOUS! Love the video! 🤣🤗😇

Right now I'm working with treated pine palings. They are supplied wet and flat but they dry out in the most warped and crooked shapes imaginable. What works for me is to weight them down on a flat surface and let them dry out flat. Once dry, they stay flat for installation. However, to keep them flat over time they have to be fastened at regular intervals and they stay flat even when exposed to burning sun and 40 degree Celsius (104 degrees F). Thicker wood like decking timber, you have to throw into the swimming pool or pond for a few days to rehydrate, then dry them out constrained into a straight plank. They actually stay straight as the microfibrils and lignin are stretched and compressed to form the straightened lumber. Conversely, you can shape wood into curves etc using hot water or steam to soften it, then bend it to the desired shape.

Wow very cool I had no idea that was possible 🏋️‍♀️👍⚡️

This is great! Given that the big box stores seem to specialize in warped boards for premium prices. Thanks!

Wow, if someone told me they would straighten out by wetting them, I would not have believed them! I usually use the creep deformation method which is clamping some warped and twisted pieces to something els that is straight, and eventually the stress would straighten them back out. But it can take several days or even weeks, and it doesn’t get rid of the twist 100%

Your property is beautiful.

Excellent video. Thanks. Just a side note... I always cover my lumber, not to protect it from the rain but from the sun.

Like your style

respect even if you are threathed never curtail to anyone who would have you adpot behavior that is unatural to and your life long morals. . thanks for the tip!

WELL DONE!!!!

I'm thinking possibly clamping them between pallets! However, that's still a great video! Good to know!

Thank you for being normal without the shock and awe click bait.

Damn I wish I had watched your video 24 hours ago! lol We live and learn! Cheers.

Sillyland! 😂 loved the video! Thanks!

Nice video mate.👍🏻

Great video - thanks

Good video!

My go to solution has always been, take the pine boards, set it aside, build a large pit fire with other scrap pieces, throw the pine into the fire as needed, then I’d go and get some red oak

Nice video man! Thanks!!

The wood is going to do what it wants to do. The force of it warping and twisting is very powerful. It should have been allowed to dry more before milling.

Good video. Thanks

well done ,thanks

I imagine the moisture reintroduced allowed the fibers to relax to where they were originally. Where I fish in Naknek Alaska theres steam boxes in the rafters of the cannery wareouses that were used to repair the old wooden boats. They would staem a lap board and run it into place and fasten them really quick while they were plyable.

Hot steam and clamping is the best !

Wow. That wood was as straight as a board. 😂 My brother told me this would work . But I never tried it. I had bought some 2x6 boards for a porch. Several warped but I tried to force them in place and screw them down. That worked, but so did I, way too much. And the result isn't great.

It stands to reason that warped and twisted timber will return to the same shape it was cut in when it returns to that moisture content. Timber is full of fibres that are misaligned as a result of the growing process and when cut those fibres are full of moisture, as the timber fibres dry out they push and pull, which causes the timber defects. This is why timber for construction/joinery work should be seasoned to get it down to a moisture content where it will be stable in normal atmospheric conditions and then cut to the shape needed. In recent times we have seen timber being kiln dried to a specific moisture content to speed up the seasoning process that normally takes a few years. However kiln dried timber can be troublesome since it is usually dried below the natural state for the atmospheric conditions is then cut and gradually absorbs moisture to stabilise, which causes further defects.

This is why places treat the wood with sealants once the moisture is out of the wood. It's a science thing. Water is basically never at rest. It's always "moving". Once in the wood it helps wood to be "more flexible" because of the water's constant state of motion. "Drying" wood will contract as the water evaporates. Weights or stacking the wood with spacers will help it maintain shape. A wood sealant if soaked in the wood fibers deep enough as it dries it will maintain its shape if the sealant repels moisture. Big box stores "pressure treated lumber" is a process of a sealant and bug repellant that is put in a pressurized chamber to force the liquid into the lumber keeping it as straight as possible and makes it last much longer. I'm trying to figure out how to keep wood straight after milled and dried as a DIY thing.

That is amazing.

Thanks so much