Re: Russ. I buy it!
William R. Duffield, on the Cohansey
>I hope you are not suggesting that people on this forum emulate that "purveyor of firewood in the guise of furniture," because if he continued with those practices, he might have put another meal or two on the table, but he would not have been in business for long.
If furniture were built like that, the likely effect would have been just as you described in our previous post, where the panel self-destructed from the inside out. Unfinished wood from the lumber pile that has not dried to EMC dries and shrinks more through the end grain. If you were to take this wood and joint a temporarily straight edge, when it finally did reach equilibrium, the center would have shrunk more than the ends, ending up with a concave edge. Intentionally adding a spring joint would make the problem even worse. In summary, that's a really bad reason to use a spring joint, and a good reason for taking the time to understand wood scientifically and also to understand the reasoning and the falacies underpinning traditional woodworking lore.