Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.

wrote:
Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Poplar is a standard hardwood to use when you're planning on painting
or covering it. It's the species that's used for a lot of the
upholsted furniture. It's relatively cheap and takes paint well.

When you say 1" square wood, you'll be asking for 5/4 (say five
quarter) stock. That's a hair over 1", but it's as close as it comes
without having something milled.

R

Since you are painting it, you don't need to be picky about appearance.
Almost any wood that had been Kiln Dried should be OK to use. Maybe you can
find something in the Molding isle at the hardware store or lumber yard.
You could also rip the pieces off of some Shelfing stock.

Poplar would probably be a good choice but most woods are stable once
completely dried, especially once sealed with paint. Red Oak would also
work well, as it is harder than poplar and may be stronger considering 1x1
construction (which I question but will ignore that since I can't look at
your actual idea). Less likly to split from the fastners or crack along the
grain.


wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Poplar would probably be a good choice but most woods are stable once
completely dried, especially once sealed with paint.

Huh? Wood is constantly moving. Not taking that into consideration
when building is asking for trouble.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Instead of wood, consider MDF since it will be painted. Compared to wood,
MDF is very stable dimensionally. Plywood is a good choice aside from the
edges. I don't know that it will fit your design.

Any properly dried wood will be reasonably stable, but all wood moves with
changes in temperature and humidity. For paint, pine and poplar are often
used as they are reasonable in price.
Ed

According to PipeDown :
Since you are painting it, you don't need to be picky about appearance.
Almost any wood that had been Kiln Dried should be OK to use. Maybe you can
find something in the Molding isle at the hardware store or lumber yard.
You could also rip the pieces off of some Shelfing stock.

Poplar would probably be a good choice but most woods are stable once
completely dried, especially once sealed with paint. Red Oak would also
work well, as it is harder than poplar and may be stronger considering 1x1
construction (which I question but will ignore that since I can't look at
your actual idea). Less likly to split from the fastners or crack along the
grain.

Poplar's advantage is not only is it very stable under strongly
varying conditions (it's why it's the preferred material for wooden
screen doors), it's _real_ cheap to get in large clear pieces, easy
to machine, stain or paint.

Even KD'd (allowing for acclimatization too!) few woods are as stable
as poplar.

With the proper joinery, poplar will be _less_ likely to split than
an open grain wood like oak, less likely to distort a light frame than
most other hardwoods, and a heck of a lot cheaper than oak.

There's a reason why they make wooden screen doors out of poplar.

If you wanted more strength than poplar, I'd recommend maple (or even
birch), but only if it's been seasoned/dried/allowed to acclimatize for
a long time[+]. And I wouldn't use it where the climate changes radically.

[+] The maple for our plant stand acclimatized for over 5 years. That's
the story I told my SO, and I'm sticking to it!
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

"Larry Bud" wrote in message
oups.com...
Poplar would probably be a good choice but most woods are stable once
completely dried, especially once sealed with paint.

Huh? Wood is constantly moving. Not taking that into consideration
when building is asking for trouble.


Wood like any material (even metal) is subject to thermal expansion but
sealed dried wood (excepting defects like knots and checks) should not warp
or split just sitting in a typical indoor setting.

By stable I did not mean "perfect and dimentionally unchanging" I mean it
is unlikely to split, warp, check or crack. Sure any piece of wood can have
a hidden defect but afterall, I was generalizing

According to Edwin Pawlowski :

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Instead of wood, consider MDF since it will be painted. Compared to wood,
MDF is very stable dimensionally. Plywood is a good choice aside from the
edges. I don't know that it will fit your design.

It sounds as if he's building the room divider as a "panel" with 1x1 framing,
and some sort of panel material. Short of making the panel out of something
big and heavy (like 3/4" MDF), perhaps the simplest/cheapest would be 1x4 poplar
plus 1/8" or 1/4" hardboard tempered on both sides. If properly sealed _both_
sides and at the same time, it should stay stable.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

In article . net, "PipeDown" wrote:
Since you are painting it, you don't need to be picky about appearance.
Almost any wood that had been Kiln Dried should be OK to use.

Incorrect. Construction-grade 2x4s are kiln dried, too. Trouble is, the
moisture content standards are different for construction-grade softwoods and
furniture-grade hardwoods. A 2x4 marked "kiln dried" absolutely is unsuitable
for the OP's described purpose.

Maybe you can
find something in the Molding isle at the hardware store or lumber yard.

Maybe...

You could also rip the pieces off of some Shelfing stock.

Doubtful, as most shelving stock is not a full one inch thick.

Poplar would probably be a good choice but most woods are stable once
completely dried, especially once sealed with paint. Red Oak would also
work well,

You've gotta be kidding. Red oak is a very poor choice for anything that's
going to be painted, unless you don't mind that coarse grain showing through
umpteen zillion coats of paint.

as it is harder than poplar and may be stronger considering 1x1
construction (which I question but will ignore that since I can't look at
your actual idea). Less likly to split from the fastners or crack along the
grain.

Doubtful again. I'd rather be driving nails into poplar than oak, especially
if I wanted to avoid splitting it.


wrote in message
roups.com...
Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.




--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

wrote:
Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?
Thanks in advance for your help.


No matter what wood you choose you need to look
for wood with straight grain. Mahogany is a wood
that holds its shape so well it was used for slide
rules. You would probably have to settle for
Philippine mahogany which is not nearly as stable.
Another good wood and very light (weight) is
western red cedar. A third wood that is light but
rather soft is redwood

"PipeDown" wrote in message
k.net...

Wood like any material (even metal) is subject to thermal expansion but
sealed dried wood (excepting defects like knots and checks) should not
warp or split just sitting in a typical indoor setting.

By stable I did not mean "perfect and dimentionally unchanging" I mean it
is unlikely to split, warp, check or crack. Sure any piece of wood can
have a hidden defect but afterall, I was generalizing


Wood moves very little with temperature. It's humidity and moisture that
cause it to expand/contract.
Obviously, with higher temperatures, there's likely to be more humidity so
the two do go hand in hand in a funny sort of way. Interestingly enough,
as wood ages, it moves less even in the presence of humidity. We're
talking in terms of years here.
Paint generally seals off moisture pretty well, hence the movement is
limited. I would recommend that whatever you do to the exposed
wood, you do to the other sides as well if you want to ensure it doesn't
move.

I've always found it interesting that homebuilder's and such talk about
houses "settling". It's actually nothing more than the change in moisture
in the wood that causes your walls to crack and the odd popping sound. If
they used well dried wood in the first place, this would be minimized.
Cheers,
cc

Larry Bud wrote:
Poplar would probably be a good choice but most woods are stable once
completely dried, especially once sealed with paint.

Huh? Wood is constantly moving. Not taking that into consideration
when building is asking for trouble.

He's talking about a 1" x 1" frame with a panel (presumably ply). A 1x1
frame isn't going to move enough to even think about even in if it were
left unfinished and used in a Chinese laundry. His only worry would be
warping of the verticals if there are no center rails in the frame.

--
dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

Chris Lewis wrote:
There's a reason why they make wooden screen doors out of poplar.

Thanks for the info...it was useful to me.

--
dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

On 12 Dec 2005 12:12:21 -0800, wrote:

Hi all,
I'm looking to build a room divider 6 feet high by 18 inches wide,
using 1 inch by 1 inch wood. The plan is to paint the frame white, and
fill in the frame with wallpaper. Can anyone recommend a good wood
species that will stay true and not warp over time?

Well, when I built mine, I used copper pipe and canvas, but if
you're going more traditional japanese...

It's more important to pick out individual sticks that
are straight-grained and knot and check-free than to
use any particular type of wood. Even pine would
work, except that you'd probably need some sort of
bracing at the corners. If you want to avoid that,
I'd use poplar, or if you're willing to spend a
little more, maple. But *NOT* the figured maple
that people spend so much money of for panels!

Other people were commenting on what wood takes
nails better. On this scale construction,
don't use nails at all. Either use tennons
and peg it, or pre-drill and use wood screws.

Are you sure you don't want to use silk or printed
cotton muslin, instead of wallpaper? How are you
planning to attach the membrane anyway?

--Goedjn