Piece of wood from Heck

[LCHIEN]

I had this piece of 1x4 and wanted to rip off some 1-5/8 wide strips. The piece, about 2-1/2 feet long looked flat and straight.
I ripped along one edge - the wood locked up around the blade- stress in the wood being relieved, I thought.
Flipped the other edge over to try again, figuring the first cut relieved the stress and only a 1/16th away would free it...
Locked up again. Tried the other end of this piece - same results.

Look at the pic: The two saw kerfs are completely closed up (3/16" closed) Look at the little strip in the middle - there's some weird stresses in this one. To the trash heap with it, it would never yield a straight cut piece anyway. I thought the heartwood pieces were more stable...

[cabinetman]

Not that odd if you cut a lot of lumber. In some cases even a riving knife can be problematic. You might have made a few depth passes, and then joint the wood.

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[Stytooner]

That isn't uncommon, but the riving knife should never be considered the problem. It was doing what it was designed to do. It's that piece of lumber that is the problem.

That piece should not be used in a project if it is that bad. It would not yield good results.
I have generally tossed all mine that were like this. Eliminate future headaches and chances are better for good results when this type material is not used.

If it is a temporary project and this might be leg bracing or something, then it would probably still be usable. In this case, I think ease of use and results outweigh the cost of the material.

This happens a lot with 1x4's in particular, but many 2 bys will also bow freely like this. On job sites, we typically cut those boards into stakes for forms for concrete.
Not much good for anything else.

[LCHIEN]

we all get pieces like that if we work long enough. THis was a particularly illustrative piece, I thought I'd post it for future reference for the newbies that post how their piece of wood stopped feeding and then (maybe) the belts broke and they can't figure out why.

[pecker]

The heartwood at the edge looks as if it was the exact center of the tree, but it's so small in diameter it looks as if it could be from the branch of a tree.

[Dal300]

I use to be a sawyer, (for a short time), on a Woodmizer saw. We cut everything from fence posts to barn siding to furniture grade lumber.

I got yelled at a couple of times for cutting lumber out of a log because I went too close to the pith.
It didn't take me long to learn that the last 2-4" on each side of the pith were squirrely and would do a lot of weird things if given the chance, that's why we never cut anything but posts from the center of the tree. Even those were prone to bending, twisting, warping and generally turning themselves into a pretzel.

I found a really nice piece of old growth walnut in one log we had and cut a 8"X8" post out of it to take home for my FiL to turn into some nice wood working project. Unfortunately, after sitting in my pickup truck for about 6 hours at 80°, the thing looked like a malaria germ. Completely worthless for a flat piece of wood more than 6" long.

The piece you show a picture of looks as if it is a tree farm growth where they do as much as they can to make the tree salable as quickly as possible. Mostly you see this with SYP, but I've also seen it in cedar, walnut, fruit trees, poplar and some others.

I have a couple of nice pieces of maple here right now that I started making cutting boards out of for Christmas presents, but after looking at them I figured I'd have the same problem, and sure enough, as soon as I resawed them, they bent into the cut and if they had been on the table saw would have probably pinched the blade, even though I have the riving knife attached.

One thing I have done with short pieces is to put them in a 200° oven over an aluminum pan of water with aluminum foil over the top.
Let them stay in for 6 - 8 hours and when you take them out, load them onto a flat surface with bunches of cinder blocks stacked on top.

Good Luck,

DF

[LinuxRandal]

I am sure I could safely cut it, but I wouldn't be doing so with a tablesaw!

That however, wouldn't stop the warpage issues, so useability is still a major factor.

[Shep]

I had a situation like this recently. Even using the riving knife it pinched my blade and stalled the motor. Certainly not fun to go through. I was able to salvage part of it. But I said a lot of choice words to get it to work.