Resawing question

[Jim Eisenstein]

I'm planning to build a cherry dresser that requires legs finished to 1-7/8" thickness. I'm finding
it hard to locate 8/4 rough cherry lumber that hasn't already been hit/miss planed to 1-15/16.
I doubt I could mill that to 1-7/8. Hence, I am looking at 12/4 cherry and resawing. My only
prior experience with resawing (8/4 ash) ended with the thinner slab immediately cupping, presumably
due to internal strains in the wood.

With 12/4 cherry is it reasonable to expect I can end up, after resawing, jointing, and planing,
with both 1-7/8" and 3/4" slabs?

[John TenEyck]

It's just as likely the ash bowed because the moisture content wasn't equal inside and out. And that will happen with 12/4 cherry just as easily unless it was dried properly. Assuming it was you still have to decide if it can be resawed immediately or it needs to acclimate to your shop first. If the MC is constant in it (unlikely) you could resaw it immediately and the parts you cut should stay flat. If the MC is not constant (more likely) then you will need to let it acclimate in your shop until it is. That could take many weeks depending upon how far away it is from the EMC of your shop. A moisture meter will tell you if it's OK to resaw now if you cut an end off about 10" and probe across the thickness.

FWIW, the legs you make will have plain sawn faces on two sides and quarter sawn on the other two unless the lumber you buy is rift sawn. That won't look all that attractive, IMO. But you should be able to cut 2" square rift sawn blanks from a 12/4 plainsawn board by cutting them at 45° from the face.

John

[Brian Tymchak]

..I'm finding it hard to locate 8/4 rough cherry lumber that hasn't already been hit/miss planed to 1-15/16.

Where are you located?

[Jim Eisenstein]

John thanks for the useful comments. You may be right that the cupping was a moisture issue, but I had guess internal strain
since the effect was *immediate* coming off the band saw. In fact, the saw kerf was closing as I fed the material through and
the two parts literally popped apart at the finish!

I also agree with your remark about plain vs rift sawn legs. For the ash project I was able to harvest effectively rift-sawn legs
from near the edges of a wide plain-sawn board.

[Doug Dawson]

I'm planning to build a cherry dresser that requires legs finished to 1-7/8" thickness. I'm finding
it hard to locate 8/4 rough cherry lumber that hasn't already been hit/miss planed to 1-15/16.

In what sense is it “required” that the legs be finished to 1.875”? I would suggest that you do your best with the skip-planed material, which should already be pretty stable, and tweak the dimensions of the other components to make up for it, if that’s necessary.

[Jim Eisenstein]

Brian, I'm in the Los Angeles area.

[Jim Eisenstein]

Doug, I have thought about that. It's just there are a lot of parts that would need resizing and I am error-prone!

[John Lanciani]

Is there any reason that you can't rework the plans and use 1-3/4" x 1-7/8" legs?

[Paul F Franklin]

Or you could do the trick where you glue a thin rift grain slice onto the two plain sawn faces. That avoids flat grain and solves your thickness problem also. Done well it is really hard to tell this was done.

[David J Blackburn]

To the original question, I would say it's possible but unlikely.

I'd wager you'd get 1 7/8 and 1/2" parts, but unlikely you'll get 3/4".

I think you Resaw at 2 1/8 or even 2 1/4 to be safe. Let it move/adjust for a few days and then mill down to what you need (maybe over a couple of days). That's the important part from what you're saying.

Then you get what you can out of what's left. Hopefully that's 1/2" or 5/8" and can be used for something at some point.

But if you shoot for 1 7/8" and 3/4" I'm afraid there's a good chance you'll get neither.

[Jim Eisenstein]

Thanks to all; I've learned a lot from the several comments. I'm thinking the resawing idea may be
beyond my ability. Going to think through re-scaling the design dimensions.

[Alex Zeller]

Are these legs square? If so could you glue two boards together to make the legs? If they are square you could glue them up to the glue line is on the corner, basically like gluing two triangles together to make a square. Around here there's only one person I know who I would trust to kiln dry anything over 8/4 correctly. But he doesn't stock stuff like that so most likely I'd order 10/4.

[Justin Rapp]

Are these legs square? If so could you glue two boards together to make the legs? If they are square you could glue them up to the glue line is on the corner, basically like gluing two triangles together to make a square. Around here there's only one person I know who I would trust to kiln dry anything over 8/4 correctly. But he doesn't stock stuff like that so most likely I'd order 10/4.

I was just going to suggest this. The bed posts on my bed (commercial built Stanley Furniture are about 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 posts and they are made from 3 1/2 x 1 3/4 stock (most like was 8/4 to start) glued together to make the posts.

[lowell holmes]

I flatten one side on a joiner and then mill it to thickness on a thickness planer. You can alleviate both cup and bow with this technique. If you do not have this capability you need some new toys. SWBO never even ask because I was making rocking chairs for family and friends. I took a chair making class from Paul Sellers at Homestead Heritage in Elm Mott Texas. They still conduct classes even though Paul is not there at this time.

[roger wiegand]

10/4 cherry is a pretty common size, not quite as big bucks as 12/4; that would give you enough to cut your pieces with some room for fudging. With any lumber that thick I'd cut oversize blanks then let them equilibrate in the shop for a few weeks to see if/how they are going to move before final flattening and dimensioning. Checking the fresh cut surface with a moisture meter and seeing how far off it is from the exposed face will give you an indication of how much trouble to expect.