Grain direction?

[Niels J. Larsen]

I'm building a rocking horse thingy - actually a rocking lion, and the head assembly will be made up of the building blocks shown in the attached picture (very poor Skethup drawing - sorry :-))
The drawing should be rotated 90degrees clockwise, so A is the top of the head (made of ovangkol), B is the "middle" of the head (made of white oak) and C is the bottom of the head (made of ovangkol).
D is the neck area, ears etc. and are also made of white oak.
Grain direction on D will be up/down in the picture (when rotated :-))
I will strenghten the joints with dominos.

My question is:

How should the grain direction on A, B and C be - both relative to each other and relative to D?

Thanks,
Niels

[Jamie Buxton]

I'm afraid I don't understand your drawing. However, there are some general rules about grain direction which might help...

* If you can, avoid "short-grain" areas. These are little pieces of wood where the grain runs across the piece, so it can break easily. For instance, if the ears on your horse are long and narrow, the grain should run along the ears, not across.

* Try to avoid long joints where the grain directions are 90 degrees apart. Expansion and contraction due to humidity change will stress the joint. Shorter joints are okay.

[Niels J. Larsen]

I'm afraid I don't understand your drawing. However, there are some general rules about grain direction which might help...

I don't blame you - I have a lot to learn in Sketchup :-)


* Try to avoid long joints where the grain directions are 90 degrees apart. Expansion and contraction due to humidity change will stress the joint. Shorter joints are okay.

What is short *enough*?

Thanks,
Niels

[Jamie Buxton]

I don't blame you - I have a lot to learn in Sketchup :-)



What is short *enough*?

Thanks,
Niels

You'll get arguments about this, but I'm not very worried about joints less than 8".