>Let me understand this. You have a piece of wood with a hole drilled in >the middle. You saturate it with water and the wood expands away from the >hole and the hole gets larger. Now lets drill five holes in a close >pattern. Saturate the wood with water. Now the wood expands away from the >hole, except when expanding away from the hole directs the expansion toward >another hole. The expansion stops short of the adjacent hole and reverses >direction in order that that hole will also get larger. Doesn't make >sense. > >David Love No, it doesn't make sense, because that's not how it works. The hole(s) will act similarly whether there is only one, or a hundred of them in the piece of wood. If you saturate the entire piece of wood, all the holes will expand in a similar way. If you steam just one hole in the middle of a dry piece of wood, that hole will get smaller because the rest of the wood hasn't gotten wet, and doesn't change dimension. The expanding steamed wood around the hole has to go somewhere, so it goes in the direction of least resistance. Incidentally, the wood doesn't expand away from the hole. The wood just expands and the hole goes along with it. The wood defines the hole. Ron N
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