American Beech Bad Behavior

solutions

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If I was in the plane business I would try buying beech of the proper thickness, cutting it into plane sized pieces and then steaming the beegeesus out of it. then drying. Commercially, the solution is probably vacuum drying. A local place that sells turning squares dries all their large squares, like 3 and 4"

Re: solutions

David Weaver

fortunately, I think my jones for building planes is waning and it'll happen seldom enough in the future that I'll make them out of something interesting, like the semi-common rosewood billets that show up on ebay.

I do have about 6 36" long 4x4 quartered billets of european beech that are steamed (horizon gave up trying to dry fagus grandifolia at least temporarily and just purchased european beech to market to planemakers).

They'll see me through the duration, but I like the look and feel of american beech a little better.

Best plan I can think of (I know horizon was experimenting with steaming and may have steamed these billets before drying them) with these should they show up on the market again is to get them and make planes of them quickly as they do fare better if they're waxed and oiled on all surfaces (no surprise) and monitored by a user. Even then, I've had them side check if they sit unattended.

My understanding also is that the drying schedule for 16/4 beech is extremely long and slow and it ties up the kiln, and I've gotten beech that was honeycombed (And they've thrown out lots that are honeycombed). It's just a tough wood to work with commercially for anything other than utility wood, I guess (and there's no real market for it).

I've gotten a few green billets off of ebay ,too, and it's the same kind of faffing around. I ended up just waxing them from end to end as they side checked while drying. If I wanted to keep building planes, I'd go through it faster, but there's nowhere for the planes to go really and excess guitars find a much more organized market.

Re: American Beech Bad Behavior

Keith Newton

The separation along the annual ring isn’t a drying defect. It’s known as Ring Shake, and happen in the living tree, and it is fairly normal for there to be a radial shake on the side opposite the pith as well.

Re: American Beech Bad Behavior

David Weaver

Thanks, Keith - I haven't looked much at pre-drying defects before and assumed that because it got worse since initially cutting another billet off of that large blank that it was separating due to seasonal movement.

It almost didn't have any consequence (well, it didn't - but the internal check that looks like honeycombing terminated this billet for now). I have gotten fresh beech billets (freshly dried) that were honeycombed, though, too, and assumed the likely cause was trying to rush the schedule to free the kiln.