Hello,
So I’ve made a few signs with my SO5P and one constant is that they all cup overnight after the carve is finished.
I am not sealing anything before hand, my garage is a fairly controlled environment.
I’m not sure what I am doing wrong…
Is anyone else having issues like this?
It usually cups away from the carved side.
For more context, I usually glue 3 or 4 flat pieces together along the edge using titebond 2.
Try to remove an equal amount of material from each side, and finish things evenly on all sides.
How moist is the wood when you start?
Try gluing them by alternating the end grain pattern…
Leave ample time for the glue to dry before planing / surfacing.
If the panel moves when you clamp it, it will move back when you unclamp it. Support the wood in it’s natural state with shims, or I like to use bondo. A couple blobs on painters tape on the table, and let it harden without the wood clamped. Once it’s hardened, clamp the wood & surface. You can cut your project on that side and ignore the back if it’s going to be non-visible, or surface off the back afterward.
Hmm the bondo is a good call.
I’ve tried alternating the end grain, and I’m still getting mixed results…so that’s what is really causing some frustration.
As far as the dryness, I’m getting it from a supplier that stores everything inside in a temp controlled area.
This is my take on the issue where I had trouble. We don’t think we have that much moisture in the air in our shops, but sometimes there is enough moisture to cause wood to do some crazy things.
I had some pine boards that were part of my closet paneling and I removed them to deal with some other issues and then replace them with red cedar. Those pine boards I took out I decided I wanted to take them to my shop to use them for something else. I ran them through my planer to make them all the same thickness. Then I took them to my miter saw and started cutting them. I cut one and set it aside.
I picked it back up and saw that the board had began to cup. So, I put it away thinking that I had missed the cupping prior. I grabbed another board and watched it cup in my hands as I was moving about in my shop. I gave up on the boards because I realized that they were cupping too much to even be used. Just a small amount of moisture had all of these boards almost unusable.
Boards have stress and tension in them during growing and even after the boards have dried/seasoned, there still can be tension in them and as one begins to work with them, the tension can begin to release and cause these boards to begin to warp, especially when applying our wet stains and clear coats.
I have had red oak do the fandango when removing a lot of material.
I have to add internal bolt downs because the blue tape and glue let go.
Same here. I live in oak country and this stuff is readily available. The heating of this wood can release the tension in them and cause boards to just dance. lol. I had a 3D project I was cutting and it was taped down with the glue and tape trick. The piece was 12" wide by 18" long. I never even made it to the finishing carve before the board tore itself from my table top and was about to become a rocket projectile in my shop.
I also have around $600 worth of 2x6x12 red oak boards that are rough sawn. These things have stayed flat the whole time they have been stored in my shop out of the elements. I know the moment I go to working on them, they will likely twist, warp, cup, and even bow up with each pass. Not going to worry about it though. I will make it work one way or another.
Thank you for all your replies. Very good to know that it’s not just me!!
So basically I’m going to have to add some strips along the back of my signs to flatten my sign back out and hopefully keep it that way…
Unless someone else has a different suggestion?? 
There are a lot of factors to why wood can twist and bow these are just a few.
Laminate thinner boards together like plywood. Railing installers use 1/8" wood strips laminated together to make curved railings that hold their shape. Even solid wood straight railings are often laminated 1x4 material so it doesn’t tend to warp badly over time.
As @Woodcrafter John had referred to the cutting of the boards from a log has a huge impact on the way wood reacts during running. Long grains in lumber have a tendency to have more issues with warping, twisting, etc,. Quarter sawn oak is the best lumber to use when working with anything when it is just a lumber piece. This makes the boards stronger and less likely to warp, twist, or go crazy, but the downfall is that quarter sawn oak is costly.
Plywood has a better control of warp because of the overlapping layers that are put together in different directions of grain. This is why cabinet makers use cabinet grade plywood because it will not warp or twist when working with it, and it will hold it’s shape. Plus, all of the glue layers make the wood hold it’s form better. The thinner the layers and the more the layers the stronger the board. So, if a person wanted to control cupping with their boards a bit more, maybe cutting thinner strips and then gluing them up with grain arch facing each other and overlapping ends would make your hard woods hold their forms more.
This would also mean cutting board thickness with maybe a band saw, planing smooth, and then gluing up. This can be time consuming, So picking hardwoods, having really low moisture content, watching how you carve relative to the grain, and not stressing the wood hard with a lot of heat from working it, can help to control wood warping, twisting, or otherwise, going out of favorable flatness.
Some of the biggest beams I have seen in some buildings were made from laminated plywood stacked together and glued up to for the shapes and make solid the beam. They will more then likely never warp or twist.
My 5/4 rough oak is a least seven year old in my shed ( plus a couple years air dry), sealed ends, on stickers.
I am about to try my 4th attempt at a 3d eagle carve. I have learned the finish cut needs to be within 2 days of the rough cut. Red Oak shrinkage is amazing.
It can be amazing just how much a board will shrink once a new edge has be cut away. I made some red oak trim for a customer and came to their house and installed it. The moisture was a bit higher then I thought in one of the boards. The board, when first cut and installed, was snug. Now the board has gaps on both ends where it is butted up against the square bottom skirts of the other trim. The gaps come to around 5/16" total from both ends. I will have to remove the board and make another one and install it, but this time I will bring the board to their house and leave it in their house until it is acclimated to their home. Once that has happened, I will cut it to size and install it.
I should have checked the moisture content of this board but I didn’t have a gage. I do now and use it to check moisture content first before using a board.
Yes, carving any board on our machines should be completed back to back and then let the wood rest again. Putting strips along the back of many things while they are drying out after carving would help to control how it dries and in what directions.
If possible, use wood that has been only air dried over a long period of time. When wood is kiln dried it has the propensity to become “case hardened”. You can research the details if interested but the gist is that it produces different stresses at different depths in a board. I’ve resawed boards of 1" KD white oak which were perfectly straight and dry, acclimated to the shop for awhile and tested with a moisture meter. After resewing down the center, each of the resulting half-width boards had “warped” considerably. Furthermore, the deflection was in the direction opposite what would be expected if the original board had a higher moisture in the center as might be expected from a half-baked dry job.
use 1/4 sawn wood …I do glue ups all the time and now I only use 1/4 sawn
Tod, this “alternating the end grain” is a myth that has been perpetuated through the years by well meaning folks. It might have had some validity back in time, perhaps because of the condition of the wood that craftsmen had to use.
Your checkmarked drawing doesn’t make any sense. No offense meant.
When straight/plain/live sawn wood dries it warps/cups away from the heart of the tree. I’ve harvested, milled & aged enough wood to assure you it’s not a myth. If the wood is quarter sawn & aged well before milling, you may have very little to no warping.
If he’s getting his wood from a ‘big box’ store there’s a good chance it’s not well seasoned & dried.
Perhaps the illustration would make more sense if it showed the resulting flat board you could get (blue)??
Of course, this is not the only reason the wood may have warped, it could be absorbing moisture in which case it would warp the other way. Or it could just be from the stress relieved from machining.
Yes, everyone knows that wood warps/cups due to changing moisture levels. The point was that glueing up a panel with alternating up/down board grains isn’t necessarily going to keep the panel from curling. You could very well just get a wavy panel instead of a cupped one.
I have installed decks for many years and when I install the top decking I always make sure to turn the grain down so later down the road the boards will not warp or cup up from the framing. I have seen many old decks that have cupped boards and when looking at the grain direction, I find they are installed upside down.
But maybe I missed something with the grains and warping in perspective.
