I bought some wood and it warped, now I want to do it right the second time. I read some threads on this topic that answered some questions but raised new ones
Longer version: I bought some 4/4 cherry for a coffee table (from Austin Hardwoods in Denver, FWIW. Denver has pretty consistent humidity but who knows what the wood went through before). I had it finished S3S becuase at the time I didn't own a jointer. Within a few days in my garage -- stored on metal shelf bracket wall rack -- the wood had warped. I thought I could "force" the bow out by aligning with cauls during glue-up (against the advice of most of the internet) but that just yielded a twisted panel (just as the internet predicted). Couple months later, I got a jointer, resawed the panels, and re-milled a couple of the boards, but now am concerned they're too thin to use in a ~40" table top (one is down to ~5/8")
I went back and got some 5/4 cherry to give myself more leeway (1-straight-line-ripped, rough otherwise). I also plan to cut to approximate length so I'm only jointing/planing at most ~40" at a time
Guy at the store said that I should have used the wood right away, rather than letting it rest in my garage
This begs several questions
- Did I really need to use the wood right away? Is that just the limitation of buying rough-cut and having it surfaced at the store, vs the seemingly perfect but also quite expensive S4S boards, or having access to gear to mill on one's own schedule?
- Should I be getting my wood elsewhere?
- How to best handle the new 5/4 stock?
- Currently it's in the garage, on sawhorses, on edge. I will move it to the wall rack tonight. Should I keep it on edge? Flat on stickers? Does it not matter?
- How long to wait before cutting to approximate length? Before jointing/planing?
- Should I mill to needed size at once, or joint/plane to the thickest flat size first, then wait some more, then plane to needed thickness? If the latter, how long to wait between the steps? It sounds a little wasteful to be common practice, but what do I know...
- Once milled to final size, how long do I have to glue up the panels, do joinery, and finish? I'm a weekend warrior at best and moving slowly -- no way can I go from rough-cut to sealed/finished in a weekend
- Should I consider sealing/finishing individual panels before moving on to the next panel to limit further movement (except the areas that are going to be cut in joinery), or should they be more stable if I properly rest/mill the wood in the earlier steps?
- Based on this experience, it seems that the proper approach is to joint/plane individual boards as needed, rather than to do all the milling at once -> all glue-up -> all joinery. Is that correct?
Thanks - I'm still a relative beginner at this, despite having read a lot of the internet...