White Oak movement

[Birdhunter]

I am building a bathroom vanity out of quarter sawn white oak. The widest side panel is about 16" wide. How much tangental movement should I plan for? My guess is about 3/8".

 

[tjbnwi]

At 16” about 1/16” depending on location.

99% of what we build is RSWO.

Wood Movement Calculator

WOOD MOVEMENT CALCULATOR Wood movement is the dimensional change in lumber caused by changes in the surrounding environment’s relative humidity and temperature. If you would like a deep-dive on what wood movement is, what causes it, and how to plan for it, here's a recent blog we published that...

kmtools.com

Tom

 

[leakyroof]

There ought to be a table available online for this. I suspect Bruce Hoadley's book has one in it for Quarter Sawn, since it's probably more stable and less prone to movement than Flat Sawn White Oak.

 

[thudchkr]

The KM Tools website has most of what you need there to do your calculations, https://kmtools.com/blogs/news/plan...from November,for dealing with the inevitable.

Just need to figure out what your expected change in Moisture Content is expected to be.

Clint

 

[Michael Kellough]

At 16” about 1/16” depending on location.

99% of what we build is RSWO.

Wood Movement Calculator

WOOD MOVEMENT CALCULATOR Wood movement is the dimensional change in lumber caused by changes in the surrounding environment’s relative humidity and temperature. If you would like a deep-dive on what wood movement is, what causes it, and how to plan for it, here's a recent blog we published that...

kmtools.com

Tom

Love RSWO. Can’t think of a good analogy but it’s strong, beautiful, and humble.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

I am building a bathroom vanity out of quarter sawn white oak. The widest side panel is about 16" wide. How much tangental movement should I plan for? My guess is about 3/8".

Unless you are seeing huge swings in humidity, I would doubt that it's more than 1/16". Used in floating panels of rail & style doors, gable ends of cabinets, or shelves, this is effectively irrelevant. It is enough to consider in other situations.

Love RSWO. Can’t think of a good analogy but it’s strong, beautiful, and humble.

It's rare, mostly only seen as veneer, but it is hard to beat quarter-sawn Walnut too. Even at that, you would probably need to have access to a mill that would do it. Similar to QSWO, it looks fantastic as rails & styles. It's clean, straight, and doesn't compete with (or take away from) your panels. Walnut is expensive in the first place, so adding custom cutting, on top of that, gets a little crazy. It's beautiful though.
We did a job, about 5 years ago, for a local stadium. It was a huge project, done in a few phases. By the time we got near the end, one of the rooms was dramatically changed. We ended up with 3 sheets of sequence-matched Rift Walnut, on 3/4" MDF 4' x 10' I would be scared to know what that cost.

 

[Birdhunter]

thanks everyone