OK - I had a pile of Elm that was sitting in the barn for a few years (8 or 9 years). It came from a tree on a friends property that we had milled, and then just stickered it in the barn - unheated/conditioned environment. Having had a yearning for a solid workbench for some time, I decided to use it to build the bench from (think cheap... this wood cost me about $0.10 per board foot, and a workbench takes a pretty fair amount of wood).
So I planed and sanded and joined the legs/cross members by laminating 3 or 4 boards together using Titebond III. Note that during planing, it was obvious that this Elm moves a fair bit due to residual stress (twisting, curving, etc... its a bit of what I would call 'onery' to work with).
THEN, after cutting the joinery and having it sit in my garage for a few weeks while I chase other projects, I come in to learn that the cross braces had cupped on the outside board and actually split the vertical legs!!
The failure was 'mostly' along the glue line, but it was actual wood fiber failure so I cant competely blame a poor glue joint. The culprit seems to be one outside board on the cross member in particular, that cupped and just forced the legs apart.
Some pics here. Since then, I have resawn them and resurfaced reglued them. So far it seems to have taken this time.
Dont know if it is going to split again as the weather changes again. I was surprised, since it seemed that it should have air dried long enough and the joinery that failed had both pieces with the grain going with each other. I guess one of the pieces still had a lot of moisture in it (I have heard Elm is hard to dry).