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Solid wood never entirely stops moving. It takes up moisture from the air and gives it back, and as it does so it swells and shrinks across the grain, while barely moving along it at all. Good furniture is not furniture that has been stopped from moving. It is furniture built so the movement does no harm.
Why timber moves
Timber is hygroscopic. In a centrally heated room in winter the air is dry and solid furniture shrinks a little: panels pull in, fine gaps show at the edges of fielded panels, and drawers run freely. In a damp summer the reverse happens. A table top a yard wide will be measurably wider in August than in February, and nothing in the finish or the glue will prevent it.
How we deal with it before it reaches you
We season and settle timber before it is worked. Boards are cut and rough-machined before they go to final size, so that most of the movement happens on the rack in the workshop rather than in your dining room.
How we build for what is left
Panels float in their frames rather than being glued in, so a raised and fielded panel can swell and shrink without splitting the frame apart. Table tops are fixed so they can expand and contract across their width. Joints are cut to accommodate the movement rather than fight it. That is why a fine line of unpolished timber may appear at the edge of a panel in February and disappear again by June. It is the piece working as it was designed to.
Where solid timber is the wrong material, we say so. A wide unsupported panel in solid wood wants to cup and split, so a wide carcass back or a long shelf carrying several hundred kilos of books is made from a stable engineered board faced in the same timber. More on that on our timbers page.
Do some timbers move more than others?
Yes. Mahogany is one of the more stable timbers we work with, which is part of why it holds fine mouldings and thin glazing bars so well. Oak is more open-grained and moves more. The difference matters most on pieces with a lot of fine detail; see mahogany furniture, cherry furniture and walnut furniture for what each suits.
What you can do
Very little, and most of it is about the room. Keep furniture away from radiators and out of the direct blast of log burners and underfloor heating. A house that swings between very dry and very humid is harder on furniture than a cold one. Something between 40 and 60 per cent relative humidity suits furniture and people alike, and a cheap hygrometer will tell you where you are. A dresser standing hard against a radiator dries unevenly and can split at the joints. The rest is on our care page.
If a piece of ours shows a gap in winter, that is expected. If you are worried about something you see, send us a photograph and we will tell you honestly whether it is movement or a fault. The workshop is on 01449 710500.