Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles laminated vs walnut stock...

65br
Dry is not the only measure, nor even a particularly good one for gauging how good a blank is. Wood gets more stable with each passing dry cycle around 6%MC. A series of cycles over 10 years gets most of the good out of seasoning a blank...

Feeling it, looking at it and listening to it are three big ones for deciding how good a blank is...
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Don't you just love the "science" of wood? (Those are really objective determinations.)

But I really think the trailer sums it up pretty well, the fact that it also ends with your name notwithstanding, and the pun not intended... perhaps:

Never made the connection before.

But actually the selection processes based on feel, sight and sound are mostly measurable, but not by the average guy (meaning guy without a lab).

Blanks with "collapse" can often be picked up by ear, even if the wood pimp planed them to hide it. The holes inside will make different sounds when struck in different places and muddy the sound. A clear ringing dense blank is harder to tell than a lightweight... But far less inclined to collapse.

Depth in a finished piece of wood could likely be measured by any number of devices looking at changes in reflected light... But "Looking into the well" tells it all without numbers.

Feel I would have to cheat a bit by by expansion to include feeling a chisel run through it; what many call "tasting" a blank. And just the oils are often enough to scream Not Steamed... or worse, steamed heavy.

The chisel can taste a fissile or brash blank better than any way I know.

Adding scent and actual taste is a good way to tell if the blank is truly what is claimed. My father used to claim claro had a warm puke taste to him... He could not explain how he knew the difference between puke temperature tastes...
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