How to store tonewood

[Joel Brown]

I have a set of wood I won't be using for several months.
Right now I have it on a flat table in the garage.
Temperatures can range between 50 - 80 F right now.
Would it be better to store inside the house?
Also I have heard about putting it between sheets of plywood to keep it flat.

This has pieces of cardboard between the tonewood pieces at allow some air circulation



This is just Plywood sheets and weights:

[Ron Daves]

It is advisable to "sticker" your wood. Stack the wood with sticks in between so that air can circulate. Make sure your stick/tonewood sandwich is on a flat surface. Add a small amount of weight on the top piece of the sandwich which should be a piece of plywood or other non used wood. Humidity is best if kept between 40 and 50 percent. I am in the desert and it gets very dry, so I keep my sandwiched lumber in a blanket box and I watch the humidity with a guage. If the humidity gets too low, I soak a couple small sponges and put them in the box.

[Michael Lewis]

You need stickering if your wood is 'green', but not if it is dry. I think just the plywood is probably sufficient weight to keep things flat unless your wood is cupping. The cardboard can't hurt.

[Waddy Thomson]

If the wood is dry and stable, the inexpensive metal file sorters are a great way to keep wood. Learned it from Howard Klepper. Each 1" section will hold most B&S sets vertically and the separators allow air circulation. I have only had one or two sets warp on me this way, and I suspect they were not fully dried or stable. If it's not stable, stickering is the only way I know.

[Bryan Bear]

I have been to the tonewood room at Hibdon Hardwoods (they process sets for LMI and many well known guitar manufacturers). The process logs into sets including kilning. There are probably thousands of back and side sets in this room all stacked on racks un-stickered. I have to imagine if there was an issue with storage in this manner they would not do it. Since they have kilns on site, they can be sure the wood is dried properly so perhaps this stacking would not be wise if you saw your own sets and are not sure how fully dried it is.

[Joel Brown]

I am wondering why plywood is being used instead of MDF.
I think plywood has more of a tendency to be warped or warp over time than MDF.
AFAIK the wood is dry.

[Ron Daves]

stickered lumber.JPG (30.82 KiB) Viewed 7499 times

Here's a picture of my next instrument's "stickered" sandwich. Someone earlier stated that "stickering" isn't necessary if your wood is dry. That's probably true if your material is kept in a stable humidity. I'm in the desert and the humidity varies a lot, so I keep my lumber stickered. Notice in the front of the stack there are two small sponges. These go inside the blanket box with my stickered sandwich. When the humidity gets below 40%, I soak the sponges, wring them out and put one in each end of the box well away from my lumber.

I travel during the summer and this blanket box goes under my motorhome couch. My pickup truck is stuffed with a portable woodworking shop that I set up when I am settled in someplace for awhile. I'm a pretty small scale operator and don't have a lot of wood around, just enough for my next project.