Machine spliced cues

[vmax]

When a shaft moves ɓetween plannings how do you get it back.
by that I'm mean do you plane more from the curved side or more from the hump side( I don't really know how to put that) or is it a bit of both or does it depend where it is, so it's a different answer if it up at the tip compared to if it's down at the shoulder.
Is there a maximum amount of movement that can be brought back, is there a maximum of a few mill before you have to bin it?
I find all this stuff fascinating

The outside of a curve is known as the radial direction, the inside is the tangential, ie: on a tangent from the middle of the diameter if the curve was an arc of a complete circle. You would take some wood from the radial, some from the tangential, either side of the middle of the bend, then round it again, see if it's straight, if not a little more etc etc.
Leave it for a couple of weeks and take a look to see if it's moved again, if it has and you have a bit of timber left to work with, ie: if you're still a couple of mm oversize then you do the same again. If it still doesn't stay straight then I'll leave it in the garage/workshop for a while so that it will absorb some moisture and hopefully straighten itself, if not then I'll add moisture by either steaming or wrapping a damp rag around the shaft where it bends, leave it overnight and then bend it over past straight the other way and leave it a couple of days to see if it goes back straight or back to where it was.
It can be a real pain to have to junk a shaft you've worked hard on for months but that's the way it goes sometimes.

If I remember I'll apply some sealer to the shafts between planings so that they don't lose moisture but it's not the real cause of the wood bending, it's the inherent memory within the wood that keeps it going back to where it wants to and one has to work around that. Once the cue is made and sealed with an oil/wqax/ laquer finish then there should be very little loss or gain of moisture unless the cue is poorly stored, ie: next to a source of heat or damp.

I used to work in a builders merchants sawmill/joinery shop and sometimes when you put a kiln dried 75mm thick board through the bandsaw to cut a 75 by 75 the first offcut would bend like a longbow and the rest would stay straight, sometimes the second cut would bend, sometimes the third but most times they all stayed straight. The proper kiln drying process helps a lot, you don't just whack it into a kiln and set the heat control, the kiln needs to dry the timber a little, add a little moisture, dry it a little again and so on so as not to stress the structure of the timber, remove memory rather than add it.

The manager there had a contract with the devon council for post and rail fencing and the council changed their stipulation from green timber to kiln dried, manager sourced a kiln from a sawmill that had gone bust, had it installed and we cut and loaded it up with ten tons of post and rails on little rail carts. It should have taken a couple of weeks to dry out properly but he couldn't wait and came in one night and turned up the heat and produced ten tons of 75 by 75 by 2.4 and 75 by 38 by 3.6 boomerangs
Still kept his job though, if that had been anyone else 🤬

[itsnoteasy]

Fantastic that Vmax, thanks.

[GR1]

Fantastic insight and skill