Puzzler

[Ron Nossaman]

Frank Emerson wrote:
> I'll give you "where there's no joint," but I have to take exception to
> "hardly ever cross grain" splitting.  Any wood will split across the grain
> before it will split with the grain,  Take a 1" cube of maple, or any
> species of wood, oriented with the grain as near as possible to parallel to
> one face of the cube.  Drill a small hole in an end-grain face of the cube.
> Chuck a center punch in a drill press, or press arbor.  Press the punch
> (without turning on the spindle) into the hole.  Which direction will the
> wood split, with the grain or across the grain?  I guarantee you, it will
> split across the grain!
> 
> Now, we can "stack the deck" to make it more likely to split with the
> grain.  We make soundboards with the grain vertically oriented, nearly 1/4"
> thick, by roughly 48" wide and 48" long.  Of course it will split with the
> grain, when the ratio of its thickness to either other dimensions is 1 to
> 192.  We can also change the odds of the direction of splitting by drilling
> 88 holes in the wood and inserting 88 screws (wedges) in each hole to
> encourage splitting with the grain.  We can also put sandpaper on either
> side of the 88 holes on a hammer flange rail to further add stress on the
> rail to defy the odds, and force splitting along the grain, rather than
> across the grain.  In any of these cases, reverse the grain orientation,
> and the risk of splitting the wood would be radically increased.  
> 
> My point is this: Don't associate the problem to be with grain orientation,
> which is a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.
> 
> Frank Emerson

If I had been talking about annular ring orientation, yea. <G>
Ron N