Greg Guarino wrote:
On Jun 5, 11:08 pm, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote:
On 6/5/2013 8:30 PM, Greg Guarino wrote:

On Jun 5, 5:30 pm, -MIKE- wrote:
On 6/5/13 10:10 AM, Greg Guarino wrote:

Does the amount of movement depend at all on the type and thickness of
finish? To take an extreme example, what about those thick resin
finishes you sometimes see on bar and restaurant tables?

Look underneath those tables. :-)

Fair enough. But I think there must be more to it than that. If
sufficient sealing eliminated the problem, people would do it,
wouldn't they?

You are not going to stop movement, a good finish will simply reduce the
amount if you spill a glass of water in the joint.

Again, I would be the last to argue that I know something the rest of
you don't. I'm just curious about the *why* of it. The answer, as best
I can tell, is that wood finishes simply do not actually seal the wood
against moisture entering or escaping.

That and as I stated earlier, everything chances shape with temperature
changes. Most wood has a moisture content in the 6~12% range. Finishing the
wood does not remove that moisture.