On Friday 04 March 2016 15:05:59 Eric Keller wrote: > a lot of Mahogany is air dried. I have some walnut that I resawed a lot of good Mahogany, I fixed it for you :) > before it dried, and it warped badly. I managed to straighten it out > with weight and fabric softener. Luthiers often use fabric softener > to help bending wood. I'm not sure if your lids are too thin or not. > I am quite convinced this crap was just pulled out of the river in Honduras last fall and kiln dried just to get it to market. Its not as dense as the good stuff I got from Home Depot a couple years ago, slightly lighter colored too. So if it spend 100 years sunk in the river, I'd expect some degradation & the clues sure seem to fit.
Mahogany is now an embargo'ed wood and must be accompanied when shipped into the states with paperwork for customs that traces it from harvest to the border, but you can bet the farm the customer never sees that paper. It was not Mahogany, but Rosewood that they raided the Gibson shops and confiscated, but the law is the same. Most of the 'exotic hardwoods' are on that list now. That tends to make a little stick of ebony cost $100 USD or more. I've machined up nearly $220 worth of it just to make the ebony trim pieces for these chests. But I still have enough left to do some more for new lids. And of course the code to carve them. > On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Gene Heskett <[email protected]> wrote: > > Greetings; Mouse miss-fire before; > > > > The lids for these chests were the first things I tried to make out > > of this crappy, poorly seasoned & dried mahogany. > > > > So by now they've had about 90 days to warp, and warp and wind they > > have done. > > > > Now I know its a popular thing to warm up oak in a steam setup, > > getting the lignite in the oak above 180F softens it and allows it > > to be bent, and it will retain that bend when cooled again. > > > > I'd druther not use steam as this stuff reads 5% and below for > > moisture, and if its temp alone that allows this, it stands to > > reason that lignite is lignite and I'd ought to be able to heat this > > mahogany, and rather than bending it, take the bend/wind back out of > > it. > > > > So obviously I have to make a chamber big enough to take these lids, > > all 3 of them, which with the bearboards ends and all are around 1 > > and 1/16" thick, around 23" wide, and about 47" long. Thats a 2x6 > > frame for height, and half a sheet of plywood for top and bottom. > > But without some insulation, hard to heat. So I am contemplating > > giveing it a wrap with some 2" blue styro, thats r11 by itself. > > That should, because it reduces the cooliing at the far end away > > from the heat source, even the internal temps. As for the heat > > source, I'm considering demolishing an old hair dryer, mainly to > > remove the plastic as much as possible, at least cutting off the > > handle, and doing a light dimmer type of control externally to set > > the heat. I don't care if it takes days to warm it up as theres > > probably 40 lbs of wood to heat without scorching that which is > > nearest the heater, only that it does get hot enough eventually. The > > slower the better and more evenly would seem to be best when dealing > > with 1/4 a barn door sized stuff. > > > > So my lack of info basically consists of how hot do I have to heat > > this mahogany to the point where it will sag of its own weight and > > flatten, and, how hot can I get the outside of the box before that > > blue styro starts getting soggy? I can put a small probe thru the > > box resting on the high point, or even stack 20 some pounds on it to > > add some counterforce to the wind its taken, and by that see it > > start to flatten. But that may need 200F or a bit more inside the > > box. IDK about mahogany. > > > > Maybe this is something Les Watts can advise on? Maybe, because the > > wind is direction in-consistent, I might have to heat each one by > > itself. > > > > Advice needed OIW. > > > > Many Thanks to the wood people I know there are a few of here. > > > > Cheers, Gene Heskett > > -- > > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: > > soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." > > -Ed Howdershelt (Author) > > Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > >---------- _______________________________________________ > > Emc-users mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >-------- _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
