Splitting and warping of oak furniture

The stem or branch of a tree transports hundreds of litres of water from the ground to the braches, stems and leaves. So naturally when a tree is cut down much of this water remain inside. In order to preserve the timber and to help avoid splitting and cracking, the wood must be dried out. It is down to the furniture maker to ensure that the wood is free from water.
The process of drying the timber and removing the moisture is called seasoning. If this occurs too quickly, the spaces left in the timber as the water disappears will be taken up by the fibres of the wood moving closer together, causing the timber to lose its original shape and warp. This can cause the wood to tear apart, causing the splits that can often be seen in timber beams.

Even after seasoning, timber will continue to dry out, so furniture makers have developed a number of techniques to avoid warps and splits occurring in the finished product. One of these is to form wide panels by gluing together several narrower strips of timber. The narrow strips are arranged so the tendency for one strip to curve in one direction is counteracted by its neighbour's tendency to curve in the opposite direction. Some makers overcome the problem by adding a layer of veneer to give a perfect, uninterrupted grain pattern across the whole panel.

Oak drawer bases and cabinet backs are particular problem areas and the traditional solution has always been to build the drawer in such a way that the timber could expand and contract across the width of its grain by allowing movement for the base at the back of the drawer. On cabinet backs the timber planks are fitted with the grain running horizontally allowing the expansion or contraction to take place out of sight at the base of the cabinet. As we can see, lots of care and planning has to go into each furniture design to ensure that the process of drying has minimal effect on each new product.