---------------------- multipart/mixed attachment >How does laminating maple at whatever angle affect its hardness - i.e. how >is this better than solid quarter sawn stock? > >Terry Farrell Hardness wasn't exactly the right word, but it was the quick one. Resistance to compression is more what I had in mind. With quarter sawn stock, the spacing of the annular rings will have a lot to do with it's compressibility. As Dale noted, driving pins in a wide grained cap requires a smaller hole than in a close grained cap for the same tightness. The wide grain is more easily compressed. In quarter sawn stock, the rings are parallel. Drive a pin in and wood of only a couple of rings is affected by any one pin. Wood a couple of rings on either side will compress to equalize the forces, taking away from that tight fit around the pin. The wider the grain, the farther from the pin that compression equalization spreads, and the less tight the pin will be for any given hole. Laminating, even at a low cross ply angle, has the effect of increasing the average density of annular rings for any given pin hole. Hard late wood rings are locked one to the other in successive laminations. The rings aren't parallel the length of the pin, so the compression gradients around the pin in any given layer will be steeper, and won't extend out into the surrounding wood as far. Even with flat sawn or rotary cut laminations, this will be a factor, as well as the change in direction of the long grain every lamination that should eliminate any tendency toward splitting. Each lamination also soaked up a little glue during assembly, and is a bit less compressible for that reason as well. You'll have a hard time driving a #7 (0.086") pin into a 0.81" hole like you would do with little problem in a quarter sawn cap. These caps also don't change thickness with humidity swings as much as a solid cap (at least by my tests), so I'm anticipating they should age more gracefully and produce fewer false beats through the years. But that remains to be seen. So far, I like it. Ron N ---------------------- multipart/mixed attachment--
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