What is wood movement? And how to account for it in furniture projects!

[@erinwalsh6803]

Super helpful! Thank you

[@danielu1763]

Good explanations. The “seasonal changes” does cause shrinkage and expansion. In the winter, though, the cold air holds less water and therefore has less humidity than in the summer. Even indoors the air will be even less humid due to the source of “dry heat”, unless using a humidifier.

[@larrycurran7005]

This is the best explanation of wood movement I have seen. Especially as related to furniture builds. Keep up the good work!

[@BauWoodworks]

Thanks Larry! That is awesome to hear. New videos are already in the making ;)

[@dougterrys]

The best video on this subject that I've been able to find on KZbin

[@BauWoodworks]

Ahhh thank you so much 🤗 Glad you like it!

[@VivekMishra-gl6qf]

Brother, thanks for this great video🎉

[@luisrendon5898]

The best video I have seen in you tube regarding wood movement and moisture content. Very precise, simple but not superficial and comprehensive.

[@petrusgerharduslabuschagne1456]

Thank you!! You have made a better woodworker out of this man!!

[@mimi-gunu]

I have seen numerous videos on KZbin . However,your one is impeccable Thank you for your efforts.

[@BauWoodworks]

Thank you so much 😍✌️ Glad you liked it

[@goodfriend6428]

EXCELLENT PRESENTATION! In excellent english too! Thank you very much!!

[@mpe777]

Excellent explanation!!! I’ve read about this in articles and books as a fairly new woodworker and I was always left scratching my head with still some confusion. If you made it easy for me to understand, I am sure mostly everyone else will understand easily. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I have certainly subscribed to you and 👍🏼. Btw I used to live in Germany 35 yrs ago as American Soldier and can’t wait to go back to visit some furniture manufacturing and wood mills to study more. Tschuss!!

[@neilf4128]

My very first, professional consignment was a dinning table made out of hickory wood. I live in a costal city near the ocean, my table would travel to its final home miles away in a dry, dessert region with little to no air moisture. The customer called me with absolute bewilderment and awe... Their table seemed to shred and explode and turn into many fibrous splinters and shreds as they drove the table home. It was my first, and very painful, lesson about wood moisture, and conditioning wood in one environment but moving it to a completely different environment would have such profound affect.

[@BauWoodworks]

Oh no, that sounds like an absolutely brutal lesson and I have had that scenario in my head with a few pieces I've made... Did you get any chance to fix it?

[@neilf4128]

@@BauWoodworks Unfortunately no. It was as nightmarish as it sounds. It really shredded into twisted fibers like wild ,unkept hair. It was the worst fail of my woodworking career, ever.

[@liquidrockaquatics3900]

@@neilf4128but it was the best learning lesson ever. Real life lessons only tend to stick if they hit people in the pocketbook. I say that as a plumber who had to help younger plumbers and fix mistakes; when I did, THEY paid for the mistake, not the customer. This really helped make those lessons more impactful.

[@jonastrolliet4527]

Very nicely done. I would just ad a tiny thing on this perfect video : Yes it is in most cases dryer in summer than winter but mostly if we speak of the outside. Inside is a different game : Your workshop might be for some reasons (basement or whatever) still very humid in summer. And the place where your furniture will end up can be as dry as hell in winter depending on how much people actually heat up their houses. Than we have a case where the furniture built in summer in the humid workshop actually shrink in the house during winter. it happened to me on an 85cm oak table I built with sliding dovetails. The oak shrinked for about 2cm during winter. Everything was ok but my point is that if you want to use those methods that you really well explained, it is important to take in account the specificity of the place you're building comparing of the one of the place it will go in terms of differences of humidity percentages. in some cases like this it is the other way around. Sure you already know this but for whoever who doesn't...

[@BauWoodworks]

Hey Jonas, You are 100% right! It absolutely depends on your specific circumstances in the shop and where the furniture will live. I think I should have made that clearer! Thanks for clarifying and sharing 🤗 Oh wow 2cm movement sounds like quite a bit. Glad you took it into account and the table is fine! Great job! 👏

[@brandygrass2014]

Best explanation! Thank u! I have watched many videos about this and this one specifically has helped me more than any of them!

[@e-vd]

Awesome explanation, very clear, to-the-point, and thorough! Thank you!

[@daved8070]

Brilliant, thank you.

[@BauWoodworks]

Thanks for watching and your feedback. Glad you like it 🤗

[@andreasklein8175]

Vielen Dank für das ausserordentlich gute Video. Ich würde mir mehr solche Videos wünschen!!! Z.B. Konstruktion mit Holz, konstruktiver Holzschutz, wie ist ein Fachwerk aufgebaut, welches Holz für welches Projekt, worauf muss man achten wenn man stabile Schränke bauen will (z.b. als Unterschrank für eine schwere Maschine oder ein Aquarium)

[@BauWoodworks]

Hallo Andreas, erstmal vielen lieben Dank für deinen tollen Kommentar. Ich nehme die Themenvorschläge gerne mit auf und das eine oder andere wird bestimmt mal in einem Video landen 😉👍

[@liquidrockaquatics3900]

Like #890 I haven’t done any testing, but I suspect that epoxy tables have less movement than most as the surface of the wood has been sealed unless it was planed /sanded down significantly. Even then, finishing a piece on both top and bottom helps.

[@TotallyNotACop96]

This is absolutely the video I been lookin for. Thank you for going I to depth this is such a frustrating concept but you helped me understand how to combat it with different methods. Thank you!

[@charlesapettit]

Excellent video!

[@roguepetunia]

Great explanation. Thank you.

[@BauWoodworks]

👍 thanks for watching 🤗

[@aafshinnik]

Excellent explanation- thanks

[@BauWoodworks]

Thanks for your feedback and watching ,🤗😁

[@mathews0618]

My house is dry in the winter and humid in the summer

[@KarelKubela]

Fantastic explained! Great job man!👍🏻

[@jdinesh4372]

Excellent explication on wood movement. Thank you.

[@BauWoodworks]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!

[@lcsvlllbs8934]

Really cool. Tks for the explanation. Nice work!

[@BauWoodworks]

Thanks Lucas! My pleasure.

[@harryn.265]

Bravo!! Thank you for this nice explanation!

[@BauWoodworks]

Thanks for watching!

[@CodyLeCompte]

Very informative, thanks so much!

[@BauWoodworks]

my pleasure to share! Glad you could take something away from it.

[@giorgisharvashidze3742]

thank you 🙏🏼 you saved my day:)

[@pecosimplu7070]

Thanks a lot for this one. I appreciate it very much and really helped me. 👏👏👏 Wish you all the best.

[@BauWoodworks]

That's awesome to read! Thank you. Happy woodworking ✌

[@Karimsss25]

Great explanation, so how do international fine furniture manufacturers account for the difference in wood moisture between all the continents if its 12 percent in europe and 8 in the US, how do people on etsy for example produce in one country and sell to another without adverse affects is there something that needs to be done to account for this. Thank s for the information

[@VaughnCampbell]

Is that wood, mdf, wood sandwich really a good idea for very large tables? I am making a work bench that is 5 ft by 9 ft and am planning to have maple top (3/4 inch board tops), and pine softwood bottom (1 inch thick). Wouldnt the glue not be strong enough along the face to hold that all from expanding and contracting?

[@alvarohernandez2764]

i suppose the wood finish like stain, oil, or paint can affect those percentages. If the wood has a hydrophobic surface, it should minimize wood movement i think.

[@viorsa8200]

Excelente proyecto muy bien desarrollado y mejor ejecutado , un tutorial un poco largo para mí gusto , lo ideal sería 15 minutos , a parte no me entero de nada de lo que dices , subtítulos en español por favor y muchas gracias por compartir sus conocimientos y experiencias , un saludo cordial y por supuesto un gran like desde Narón , Galicia (España) 😜🤓

[@BauWoodworks]

¡Muchas gracias! Lamentablemente no logré ser breve. Desafortunadamente, no podré ofrecer los subtítulos en español porque eso es demasiado engorroso para mí. Lo siento. Los mejores deseos (Google translate)

[@mypony891]

What about the summer humidity? Here where I live in the us the summer humidity sometimes gets up to 90%. Wouldn't the wood expand more in the summer than winter?

[@CyrilViXP]

Exactly

[@SerhatAkiska]

Hallo Bau-Woodworks, all is "sehr auserordentlich", I am in the process of building a dining table here in NJ, where it is really humid. I am assuming that all the table top pieces ( Five 9.25"x46" poplar will be dominoed and glued with breadboards at both ends) are at their expanded state due to humidty. I will use those "Z" clips to attach the top to the base. I also was thinking to leave the breadboards approx. 1/16"-3/32" sticking out from the sides of the top to allow shrinkage/expansion. I was wondering if this is necessary when all wood is going to shrink once in the climate controled house? I was at the wood movement calculation sites: poplar isnt on the species list (not a big deal), my question ( a silly one) is this should I use the total table top width or the width of the individual planks? I did try both, the result of the total width seems extremly high and I cant believe the movement would be that much. I hope I was clear enough and you can send me your take in this issue. Danke in voraus....

[@DominikRicker]

Enough said 👍

[@BauWoodworks]

✊

[@kubilayylmaz1716]

Well done explain oak wood Expert job but where I live in Holland wood seller don't have Baltic bearch playwood! all construction playwood .

[@oh.ok_woodwork]

Wtf, at the point you mentioned around 13m, I DID think about subscribing 🔮

[@ripigogbl]

Muito legal!

[@BauWoodworks]

obrigado

[@flyingsawdustjemtz9226]

Design and construction of furniture need to consider wood movement primarily in the indoors environment. We all know this. Humidity is greater in the summer than in winter in all regions of the world if the indoors environment is air conditioned. Heating in winter time dries the indoors environment and the wood shrinks. In the summer, even though air conditioning dries the indoors environment as well, the humidity is much greater than in the winter time. In the US we design assuming that the humidity will be greater in the summer than in the winter. We are in the northern hemisphere, the same as Germany. How can your humidity be greater in the winter than in the summer?

[@luisrendon5898]

There is just a mistake of wood expansion or contraction in summer and winter, its opposite of what it has been said.

[@Wood_Slice]

Superbly informative. Just not a fan of the terms (longtitunial etc) i much prefer length, width, height terms for me at least.

[@BauWoodworks]

Thanks. Yeah me, too. Especially since these words are pretty hard for me to pronounce and I had to make sooo many takes because of it. But length, width and height do not reflect the way wood moves, since it is highly dependend on the way the growth rings are in a board and they run in a circle. Therefore we could replace longitudinal with length in most cases but radial and tangential can't really be replaced...

[@CyrilViXP]

The air is dryer in the winter than in the summer. The moisture evaporates faster in the summer because hot air could hold more moisture in it. Wood shrinks in the winter and expends in the summer. So it is directly opposite to what is explained

[@alvarohernandez2764]

Bytheway, it is backwards. It's dryer in the winter and moist in the summer, not the other way around.

[@mathews0618]

If your wood fluctuates 5% through the seasons then the worst it will move is a hundredth or so of an inch.

[@00schralf]

Well explained! Thanks for the lesson 😁👍 Cheers #00schralf

[@BauWoodworks]

hehe any time ;) and yes, all of this will be relevant for the exam 🤓

[@bobwhelk2117]

Somebody is party pooper.