Hey everyone,
Newbie here, hoping to get some collective wisdom. I'm a novice, and I'm making a dining table out of hickory. Glued up my boards, got the tabletop milled flat, cut in half (I'm making a leaf as well), set my two sides on a workbench for about 4 days. Finished thickness is 1 3/8". Came out a few days later to see one side had cupped considerably down the middle along the grain, about 1/4" across the width (41"), maybe a bit less.
Did some research here and I think I know what I did wrong, both in glue-up and in laying it flat in my workbench rather than on stickers. Didn't help we had a major cold front swing through and temps/humidity changed drastically.
Long story short, I've got both ends of the table top on stickers now, crown side up, and put weight on the top for about 36 hrs now. Seems to have helped some, the cup is down to about 1/8". My question is, I've read that applying water to the convex side can help flatten the board by evening out the moisture content--should I try that? Should I just keep the weight on longer? How much weight should I be putting on?
Related note, is this an issue with hickory? Made my last table from poplar and didn't run into this problem.
Thanks!