And then it warped.

[Randy L.]

I finished building my toybox this weekend. When I came home from work on Monday night, I went into the garage to look at my accomplishment. At first glance I noticed something was wrong. The lid was not flush in the front. It Warped from front to back. The back was flush in part because the hinges were holding it down.

The lid is constructed of 7 1X3 boards joined with biscuits. Any suggestions as to how to prevent/fix the warping. Pics are at http://randylowe.com/toybox These are taken before the lid warped.

Randy.

[jim]

Randy, did the sun get a chance to shine directly on the lid while you were away? If so, try opening it and letting the sun shine on the other side for a while. No joke, it might come back. Also, do you know about cupping? When you look at the growth rings on the end grain, those lines will usually try to straighten out as the wood dries ( usually, but each stick different depending on where it was in the tree when it was still standing). When gluing up a wide panel, you want to try to alternate these "cups", one up - one down etc. so they cancel each other out. If you sight down the warped edge, you might find that there is only one or two offending boards. In that case I would rip it at those points, joint it again and reglue it. I have a feeling (based on how quickly it warped in the first place) that the sunshine trick might work for you, I would try that first. Hope this helps. Good luck!

[Lou_williams]

The other issue you might need to look at is the finish. I am not sure if you have applied finish to the toy box. If you have did you use the same number of coats on both sides of the lid. That is very important to prevent the issue you have.

I would guess that the sun/heat/mosture caused your problem

[MadMark]

Boxes also tend to warp because the humidity in the box is different than that outside the box.

Open the lid and let the air flow for a couple of days. The top should unwarp.

Once things are back to normal finish it everywhere! Make sure that you seal the inside and outside. This should lessen the rate of water vapor adsorption and keep things from warping excessively in the future.

You may want to put a breadboard end on the top. This will help keep things in line.

M

[jim]

I forgot to mention that if you do have to rip it, you'll have to add a piece to make up for what you remove. But you knew that anyway...

[MadMark]

Randy,

Just as an aside, you need to check your HTML. That page of yours keeps changing when I refresh and most of the pictures link to the same image.

M

[Randy L.]

Thanks for all the advise everyone. I finished the box on Sunday. That night we had big thunderstorms, ie. a change in humidity. I think it might have attributed to the warping. I will remove the top and wait a few days to see if the warping resides. I was thinking I might could use some thin strips to pull it straight.

As for the web site, the HTML looks good. I am running an apache server from my PC at home. There are certain limitations to the set up, so sometimes it hoses it up. It seems to do better for those with high speed connections (T1 and above).

Thanks
Randy.

[MadMark]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-13-01 AT 09:24PM (CDT)[p]LAST EDITED ON Mar-13-01 AT 09:23*PM (CDT)

Dunno what to tell you.

I'm on road runner now and today at work I was on T1 and it kept reformatting. Dunno what to tell you. When I clicked on any of the pics (and one was showing as broken - no image) I always got the same pic of an outside corner with some cardboard in the background.

The layout of the pics would be 1:2:1:all the rest (reading number of pics in a row) or it would be 1:3:1:all the rest or it would be 1:2:1 some text and the rest of the pictures. Very odd.

I'm running Netscape 4.7 both here and there.
...
Just looked at your page source. That may look good in visual studio, but there is some *ugly* html being generated. At least one of your image refs has the // as \\.
...
Just went over and looked at it in IE, looks fine. You've got a IE specific page there my man. It is *FUGLY* for us with NetScape.

M

PS, nice toy box.

[Randy L.]

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that. Let me check it in NS... Oh man your right, that is nasty. I have been using Interdev at home (MS product). The problem is that NS (Nutscrape) is a little less forgiving with tags and such. I should probably use a different tool like Homesite, at least till NS dies completely. Then it will be opera I suppose. If only they would all stick to the standard.

Thanks for the debug info.

R.

[MadMark]

!@#$%^ Micro$oft.

M

[Lou_williams]

Its Microsoft that does not stick to standards.

Bill will do anything to kill competition. That is why I only use the products from them that I have too. I use a Mac, Adobe, netscape, and others.

I have to use office to create files others can use, but if star office worked I would go to that.

Some of the best software ever written is no longer available because of MS competitive practices.

YOU just hit a sore spot.

BREAK UP MS.....

[Randy L.]

They actually both deviate from the standards somewhat. IE ends up being a lot more forgiving of syntax. Of course, MS authoring tools are going to put it together to work for IE and ignore the standards (yielding sloppy code). Same goes for their J++ IDE. You have to be real careful or you get hybrid java. I actually can appreciate the forgiveness of IE. When you get into generating dynamic pages through third party tools, you need all the flexibility you can get. Divs and CSS, image maps etc. Nine times out of ten you end up with exceptions for NS that would not be necessary otherwise. Speed is also a strong point for IE. Anyhow, I guess we should save this sort of discussion for another forum.

As for the top of the toybox, I removed the lid, inverted it and set it across the box. I just took a look and it is back to being straight. I guess I should get some paint on it soon.

Thanks for all the WW and HTML/Browser advise!
Randy.

[MadMark]

Glad the top levelled out. Had the same issue with a top to a secretary I built. Set the (unfinished) top on the box and within a HOUR it was warping. Took it off and it flattened back out at about the same speed.

BTW, my web site is completely maintained with *WORDPAD*! (gasp!)

Stop by: http://www.netexperts.cc/~lambertm/Wood/wood.html

M

[Lou_williams]

I build web pages with Adobe Go Live 5.0. So far all of the stuff I have done works on all systems I have tested it on. I have to make sure that it work on unix machines as well as PC's and Mac's. Many different tools.

Front page and other MS tools that others use make it very hard to do anything complex but it all works on IE.

[MadMark]

I, for one, hate Front page. It second guesses your code. I've had it *break* pages that were working fine (and had legitimate HTML).

M

[Randy L.]

The real problem for me is that I am a software developer by trade. I dont do a lot of HTML, as we have a team of HTML developers who do that for us. I deal mainly with back end systems, Unix, oracle, domino, and tie into HTML interfaces others produce. After nine hours a day of coding, juggling projects, fighting the specs, etc, the last thing I want to do at home is code. To spend a lot of time coding HTML using a text editor and debuging a simple page is not my idea of pleasure. Don't get me wrong, I love to code. But at home I have so many other things to do that I had rather do. If I did not get the chance to code at work, you bet I would be in there on my PC at night developing something. I thing I will try Homesite. This is what our HTML guys at work use.

Checked the lid again this morning, staight as an arrow.

Randy.

[MadMark]

Get some finish on it ASAP! Make sure you apply equally to both sides at the same time! A couple of coats of poly will reduce the rate of water vapor adsorption and while it'll still want to warp if left closed during changes in humidity, the rate will be slow enough so that you'll not notice the warp or the humidity will return to the original level before it really starts to go.

I'm so tired of coding it ain't funny, but I use a template for my pages and can throw one together in just a few minutes. Also, I don't try and get too fancy with the code. This makes my life easier and avoids compatibility issues as "vanilla" works equally well (albeit boringly) in both IE and NS. Using a template also gives all my pages a "signature" look.

M