I read that a lot of old furniture was built with wood that had a 12% moisture content, not the 6-8% we use now

Found it in a book about 19th century workshop practices from the library. It explains why some restoration jobs on antique pieces can be tricky with modern kiln-dried stock. The wood moved differently back then. Has anyone else run into this when matching material for a repair?

3 comments

3 Comments

charlesj463mo ago

Is that really the main issue though? I've seen plenty of old stuff fixed with new wood and it holds up fine. Maybe the problem is just using cheap wood now.

thomas_young3mo ago

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I had a real headache trying to patch a section of an old pine floorboard. The new piece, even after letting it sit in the house for weeks, still shrank more than the original and left a tiny gap. It taught me to always check the old wood with a meter first.

spencer_johnson222mo ago

Used to roll my eyes at guys who got all fussy about moisture content. Figured wood was wood and cheap kiln dried stuff from the big box store worked fine if you let it acclimate long enough. But after trying to replace a broken leg on an old dining chair with some "seasoned" pine I had sitting around for months, the new piece just kept twisting and cracking while the original stayed put. That antique wood really was dried different, more like 12% like you said, so it had more give and stability over time. Now I always take a scrap of the old piece to match the moisture rather than guessing, saved my bacon on a few repairs.