"Roger Bigras" wrote in message
.. .
Tony Jester wrote:
Hi,
Is there any way to straighten bowed lumber? By bowed I mean the board
curves off to the left or right as you sight down its length. I have a
large amount of 5/4 by 4 inch cedar trim boards for the house I am
building.
Most of these have become so badly bowed as to be unusable.

I thought about attaching a straight-edge and machining them straight on
the
table saw, but I think they'd end up only being maybe two inches wide at
the
most.

Thanks for any help!

-Tony-


I'm no expert, but if you can wet wood to bend it, why not wet it to
straiten it?

I'd try to make a jig to hold the pieces firmly that allows the pieces to
be straiten by applying counter pressure to the bend area, keep a
sprinkler going on the wood, after several hours you'd be able to
determine if it actually works.????

I did that once; wet the board and recurved it for a couple days to let it
dry. It took out about half the curve, but a few days later it was back
where it started.

It turned out to be a bad news/good news joke.
The bad news it that it didn't go back to it's original shape until after I
used it.
The good news is that the curve turned out to be a nice design note; now I
claim to have done it on purpose.