Cracked Tabletop, wrong technique???
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Back in the summer, I made a Stickley trestle table with a 1.5 inch top, 40” x 55” kiln dried red oak. Now that winter has come and humidity is down in the house, one end of the top is cracking in multiple places, with one being fairly substantial. I have attached the top with multiple Z clips and there are no breadboard ends. There’s literally nothing preventing the top from moving the way it wants to. What would cause a crack in a tabletop that has the freedom to move?
There is on large crack and multiple other smaller ones along the medulary rays. They were definitely not there before I finished the project.
Any thoughts??
A board can split like that when attached to nothing at all if the ends dry faster than the middle. I would assume a table top glue up is more veulnerable to that. Perhaps the wood wasn’t dried well enough? Any chance the end with the problem is in the sun or near a heater?
The table isn’t in the sun, but it is about 5 ft from a heat register though. I thought that would be far enough away to avoid any issues. The lumber was in my shop for about 2 months before I worked it and it is kiln dried, but I never put any MM on it. I’m beginning to think that it was improperly dried from the supplier, and now that humidity is 30% in my house it’s causing issues. It might be time to invest in a MM.
Almost every board is now showing at least some cracking along the endgrain at the medular rays.
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