there's a ton of well known funiture building techniques to deal with this. Bread board ends for tables, floating frame construction for doors. That's a huge bummer about your beautiful work. You might be able to cut off the frames and reglue them back together
Wood at the microscopic level is like a bundle of thin straws along the grain. The wood will expand and contract with the seasons perpendicular to the grain (with only very little movement change parallel to the grain). Therefore, in these butcher block chess boards, the squares of the chess board must have shrunk (i.e. from entering a drier season or continuing to dry out naturally). The length and width of the border pieces would not have shrunk - they have remained firm at their original size (or thereabouts) while the squares have shrunk and pulled away from the border. So, rather than the edges ripping the boards apart, it's the centre shrinking and pulling away from the edges.
I imagine there's still probably a lot of solutions to this issue that have yet to be explored. Keeping the frame attached through tension rather than glue could be worth a shot. Or maybe creating a sort of gap or spacer to relieve tension when the wood expands or contracts (kind of like a sidewalk). On another note, your glue-ups are some of the most complex I've ever seen. I have no clue how you can get such a perfect fit with such odd shapes.
@@StinkingBishopit really doesn’t matter what people think. What matters is is the maker happy happy happy with the end result. There’s wayyy too much BS from woodworkers that think there’s only one way to do things and it’s their way.
there's a ton of well known funiture building techniques to deal with this. Bread board ends for tables, floating frame construction for doors. That's a huge bummer about your beautiful work. You might be able to cut off the frames and reglue them back together
Wood at the microscopic level is like a bundle of thin straws along the grain. The wood will expand and contract with the seasons perpendicular to the grain (with only very little movement change parallel to the grain). Therefore, in these butcher block chess boards, the squares of the chess board must have shrunk (i.e. from entering a drier season or continuing to dry out naturally). The length and width of the border pieces would not have shrunk - they have remained firm at their original size (or thereabouts) while the squares have shrunk and pulled away from the border. So, rather than the edges ripping the boards apart, it's the centre shrinking and pulling away from the edges.
I imagine there's still probably a lot of solutions to this issue that have yet to be explored. Keeping the frame attached through tension rather than glue could be worth a shot. Or maybe creating a sort of gap or spacer to relieve tension when the wood expands or contracts (kind of like a sidewalk).
On another note, your glue-ups are some of the most complex I've ever seen. I have no clue how you can get such a perfect fit with such odd shapes.
Not sure if the grain direction has anything at all to do with the cracks in your boards.... I've done it for 10 years and have had ZERO issues.
Surely not an issue if the timber is dry? Never seen it before either.
@@StinkingBishopit really doesn’t matter what people think. What matters is is the maker happy happy happy with the end result. There’s wayyy too much BS from woodworkers that think there’s only one way to do things and it’s their way.
maybe try a floating panel
you would think youd learn the first time it happened🤦♀