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Wood Joints and moisture

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ohioflyer

Active Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2005
Messages
36
Location
Sunny Cleveland Ohio
I got a terrrible suprise last night when I got home. I went to do a little work on my firewall and found several MAJOR joints had broken. I built this firewall last winter, inside when the air was nice and dry. It gets plywood on either side of it but I have been waiting to cover it until I could place a nice big order for plywood from ACS. Covering it is the very LAST thing to do before jigging up the fuse and finally get someting 3 dimensional looking. It has been very humid recently and the failed joints are all where the endgrain on my Ash reinforcement blocks where they are glued to the Spruce framing. I have been very carefull when moving this thing around beacause I knew that it would be a very weak joint until it got the plywood on either side to lock it up. I was working on this thing like a week ago and it was fine, and my plywood will be here this week sometime (ARRGG!) I don't have to scrap the whole thing, but the entire botttom thrid needs to come off and be redone. This firewall hes very large Ash reinforcement blocs, and this no doubt contriibuted to the joint failing, as wood likes to expand across the grain much more than with the grain. I am going to laminate up the next blocks and orient the grain 90 degrees, so I'll have sort of Ash plywood reinforcement blocks. I do have other blocks in other frames, but they are all covered and ready to go and show no signs of problems (WHEW!). I just Thought I would post this as a lesson for all in moisture and expansion problems in joints.

Ed
 

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