Wood & Moisture Question

[JLaw]

For over a year now, I've kept my wood (all non-stabilized) inside the house. Knowing that I live just north of humid Houston Texas, is there a way to know if my wood is dry enough to use without it shrinking up on the handle?

JLaw

[Frankallen]

Originally Posted by JLaw

For over a year now, I've kept my wood (all non-stabilized) inside the house. Knowing that I live just north of humid Houston Texas, is there a way to know if my wood is dry enough to use without it shrinking up on the handle?

JLaw

I live in Alabama,which is very humid State also. I really don't have any problem with my wood shrinking, as long as I put it on the Knife dry. Most of mine is kiln dried and I use mostly un-stablized Wood also. Hope this helps.

[AUBE]

The problems I've found is even if you have held onto wood for a long enough time for the moisture level to balance to your surroundings....you might make a knife and ship it to someone in a different climate, then it can suddenly lose or gain moisture and shrink/crack/warp on you. Some woods are much more prone to this than others.

For example you make the knife in a humid area give/sell it to someone who then takes the knife with them when they get deployed to Iraq..and the dry air leaches the moisture out of the wood and potentially changes its dimensions.

The best bet is to use stabilized wood. Failing that using a naturally oily/waxy wood will help minimize this problem, or trying to seal the wood yourself can help. I made a small vacuum chamber with a canning jar, hand vacuum pump, and Minwax that seemed to help reduce the problem.

[Ray Rogers]

There is a small tool that you can buy to check the moisture level in wood. I don't have one but I've read that they aren't expensive.

No matter what the moisture level in your wood may be it will absolutely positively swell up or shrink if the knife is sent to an area with a significantly different atmosphere than where you now live. Sometimes it will happen quickly, sometimes it may take years, and a lot depends on the kind of wood and the type of finish you put on it. Full tang knives are the easiest for warpage/shronkage/swelling to take hold but any style can experience these problems. Most of the time the problem won't be bad enough to ruin the handle, just enough to be noticeable.

If you can't accept these facts about wood handles then your choices are to have the wood professionally stabilized or use something besides wood. Even stabilized wood can shrink a tiny bit but even the worst of it is barely noticeable usually.......

[TexasJack]

I live in The Woodlands as well and I haven't had a problem. Generally, the air conditioning will keep the house dry, so wood moved from the garage to the house (like a piece of furniture) could have some movement. But the wood for knife handles is fairly thin and gets sealed when it's installed (or should be sealed), so it shouldn't be a problem.

Now if you're trying to dry a piece of wood, then it does take longer with the humidity.

[ckluftinger]

JLaw - if you take "green" wood and store it in your house for a year, it will still shrink, no matter what. Any wood should be seasoned at least two years at "ambient' temperatures, indoors or out (actually, it's the humidity, not the temperature which is important, although in some areas these go hand in hand). Since most people will keep their knives indoors, it would make sense to move any potential wood indoors well before using it for any sort of fine work, be it knives or furniture. If you get kiln-dried wood it should be aclimatized for at least two months after it has been taken out of the kiln to allow it to balance to your ambient environment. Once it is sealed, it should be fine. Sealing will only slow down the changes, it won't stop them altogether. As a rule of thumb, fine-grained hard woods are less prone to changes in shape than coarse grained and soft woods. And, as stated above, oily woods tend to resist the swelling and shrinking better. I don't have any experience with stabilized woods yet - I have a piece of stabilized amboyna burl waiting to be used - and I can only take the advice of the more experienced knife makers here when it comes to stabilized woods. I have been making furniture, and restoring antiques for many years, and I have seen both ends of the scale: hundred-year old chairs, tables and cabinetry still as tight as the day they were made, and others where the boards, legs and frame have shrunk so much you pretty well have to tear them apart and reglue them because the wood shrank so much. It would seem shrinking is more of a problem than swelling, from my experience - except the odd cabinet door which needs a bit of adjusting. I also find the light colored, "northern" hardwoods - maple, birch, alder, etc. are more prone to changes in humidity than the dark, exotic ones. Maybe it's because the light colored, cold-climate hardwoods lack the oils of the tropical woods...

[JLaw]

All good information, thanks for the tips.

JLaw