In the woodworking, furniture making and DIY world, moisture is just about always a bad word.

Wood moves

One rule I tell all my students, as well as anyone else who will listen, is that wood moves. It’s just about impossible to stop that from happening. Furniture makers have a few tricks up their sleeves to engineer a piece of furniture so seasonal changes in humidity don’t affect the parts of a piece of furniture (especially the moving parts, like doors and drawers). Grain orientation is one of them. Flat cut wood moves about twice as much as quarter cut wood. But I overlooked grain orientation when building the drawers that frustrated me so much about six weeks ago. I had my eye on the design portion of the build, and didn’t pay enough attention to the (flat cut) material I used for the drawers.

When I installed the project, the drawers fit perfectly, if I do say so myself. The gaps around the four sides of each drawer front were even and a nice width. Then it got humid. The drawers quickly swelled, almost locking inside the two drawer boxes they were housed in.

The lower drawer runs on the bottom of the drawer box, but the upper drawer runs on a pair of maple strips that were let into the inner face of each drawer box gable. Both upper and lower drawers in both drawer boxes were either snug or nearly impossible to pry open.

You should be ashamed, Rob

I hung my head in shame, headed to the shop and brought home a block plane. As shavings fell to the living room floor, I inched closer and closer to a properly fitting set of drawers. I didn’t want to take too much off, as that would only mean a loose, unsightly fit come February. As they sit now, the drawers are moving freely. I haven’t brought my block plane back to the shop yet, as June has only just begun. These drawers have the entire summer to soak up moisture and expand to the point of more frustration and embarrassment on behalf of their humbled maker.

Excuses, excuses

You’d think over 30 years in the furniture making industry would have taught me the main rule in furniture making; wood moves, so engineer properly. In my defense, it’s been a strange spring. The heat hasn’t really hit until just the past few days, so we haven’t had our air conditioning on at all. Air conditioning units not only cool the air, but remove humidity from it, meaning wood has less of it to soak up. But this spring has seen not only relatively low temperatures, but a fair bit of rain and damp weather.

I’m now keenly watching, and drawing drawers open and closed, while I test out the effects our air conditioning unit has on wood. A slight shave might be in order, but I’m hoping we’re done making shavings in the living room.

Workshop moisture meter

A few years ago, I sliced about 3/8″ off the length of a small pine table top. Rather than pitch it in the garbage, I hung it on the wall. One of its edges is perfectly straight. I wrote the overall length of the strip and the date onto it, so I could compare its size down the road. It’s 3/16″ longer in the summer than in the winter. I use it to show clients and students how much wood moves. I should study it myself once in a while.

How about you?

Have you had any challenges with doors or drawers swelling in the summer months? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Yet another comment

Speaking of the comments section, last week I posted 11 macro images of woodworking and DIY items. We got a bunch of good guesses by five readers, though they only got between two and six of the items correct, out of the 11 posted. I also got some emails with answers. I posted the correct answers in that column, in the comments section, along with images of the 11 tools / items at the end of that updated column.