Article: What causes wood to warp?

In this article we will discuss both causes and cures for wood that has waped.

Before any attempt can be made to straighten wood that has warped, you need to understand what caused it in the first place. Most of us underestimate the power behind warped wood. Straitening is not as simple as it may sometimes seem, and every action taken will have consequence. Understanding warp is the key to reversing it permanently.

 Part 1 - Understanding Wood Warp


One of the most common searches we get on our website concerns warped wood.  We had a discussion on our forum about it as well that has some very useful information and certainly worth the read.  Warping can be a really frustrating problem when we're confronted with it.

The biggest problem isn't just the warping of wood itself, but our own selves that have become obsessed with instant gratification. We have become perpetually impatient people and that in and of itself just doesn't fit well with a warped table top that really doesn't care what else you have going on in your life. We gotta fix it now, right now ! Mother Nature sometimes takes control though and shows us we can’t always get the instant gratification we expect.

I will take a wild guess that if you are reading this article, you are confronted with some type of warping issue.  You probably expect to find a quick easy fix because that is the world we live in. I have put this article together to include some quick fixes because they do exist.....kind of.....sometimes.  Most readers have already skipped past this text looking to "get to it". This just happens to be one of those subjects that will require you to slow down and take some time to understand a few things about wood and how & why it warps.

I think before any attempt can be made to straighten wood that has warped, you really need to understand what caused it in the first place. So before we go into some different methods of non-intrusive straightening, ask yourself this question: what is wood? Silly question I know -  but seriously, wood is a material made of cells and fibers that swell and shrink depending on the temperature and moisture in the surrounding air. This takes place to different extents in different directions. Understanding wood and it's properties is key in understanding how to fix wood warp.

All solid wood expands & contracts, but to different degrees with different species. When a tree is first cut, the water in between the cells evaporates, then shrinkage sets in as some of the water within cells dries out. Drying from its green condition, wood will retain its original dimensions until the moisture content falls to about 30%, from which point it will shrink as it dries.

A certain percentage of water always remains. With thorough air-seasoning, the moisture content of most types of wood will fall to between 25 and 15 percent, at which level it will be in balance with the moisture content of the air around it, and would be stable enough to be made into furniture.

Three Typical Movements

Longitudinal movement in normal wood is negligible. When going from green to dry, movement along the grain averages less than 0.1 percent – a 10′ piece of green wood shrinks about 1⁄8″ along its length. This movement is so small it has almost no impact on our woodworking techniques. If, however, the hardwood is juvenile wood (less than 20 years from the tree’s center) the shrinkage can be upward of 2 percent or some 20 times greater.

Radial movement is shrinkage that occurs as you move outward from the center of the tree. In flat-sawn lumber, radial movement affects thickness. This shrinkage is intermediate to the other two kinds of movement and is generally, in North American species, stated to be between 4 percent and 6 percent. On a flat-cut, 2″-thick piece of hardwood, movement could be as much as 1⁄8″ in thickness.

The third movement, and the one that is most substantial, is tangential movement. This is movement across the grain and should always be considered when building projects. Wood movement across the grain, again based on North American species, can be from a low of 6 percent to a high of around 12 percent. A flat-sawn 6″-wide board could move up to 3⁄4″ from the green to the dry stage. As you can see, tangential movement is nearly double that of radial movement.

It’s important to note that each example given to this point is for flat-sawn stock. Quartersawn stock – where the width of the lumber is perpendicular to the growth rings – reacts differently. Quartersawn lumber is more stable because the faces of the boards react to radial movement instead of tangential movement.

Have you ever taken notice that antique oak furniture has not suffered as much from warping as other wood species, while mahogany furniture for example seems to have more than its fair share of such problems. The principal reason for this is that much of the wood used for oak furniture was quatersawn, so that the width of the board followed the radius of the log along the medullary rays, at right angles to the annual rings. This cut produces a board which is still liable to shrink but not distort.

When a panel was made from quartersawn cut wood, it would be fitted in a frame without glue so that with seasonal environmental changes it could move freely. If such a panel has split, it is probably because movement has been inhibited in some way. In the case of mahogany furniture, there was a demand for the widest board possible, which often meant taking a piece from the full thickness of the log. Such a board was cut through the growth rings of a tree at varying angles across the width, therefore exposing it to problems of distortion.

A cool environment with a relative humidity of about 55% and a little bit of air movement is said to be ideal for wood and antique objects in general. A sudden change in the circumstances is the worst thing possible as the moisture will be sucked out of or pushed into the material far too quickly causing even more tension inside it.

Now that we have an idea why and how wood warps, what can we do about it?

  Step one is to look at the role of an object and decide whether any action is necessary. If so, step two is to investigate the possible ways of gaining access to the warped component while at the same time considering the consequences of any other components involved. Then, having decided on the kind of treatment, we must think of a way to stabilize the object in its new shape and how to re-assemble whatever had to be taken apart.

Non-intrusive treatment would be changing the environmental circumstances, with little risk of damaging the object further except perhaps for transport. When a piece of furniture with a lot of shrunken components is placed in a damp environment, it might just return to its original shape. In the case of a warped door which does not close properly anymore, shifting the hinges is a possibility.

Another non invasive fix on a door, and one that I have seen work often, is adding a single or multiple catches to the warped end of the door. There are numerous options, such as the three pictured below. In the case of a warped drawer, we could consider doing something about the drawer runners.


Depending on the reason why the wood has twisted, another option to consider is that we can extract more moisture on the convex side or add moisture on the concave side. Humidity and heat partially soften the cells in the wood, allowing the wood fibers to slide along each other. After cooling and drying, they return to their initial state and the wood maintains its new shape. Forcing the wood into a slight counter twist in the cooling process is an aid but not a guarantee to prevent twisting back.

This is a non invasive fix that will work at times, but be advised that by no means is it 100% and really only seems to work on wood that has never been finished (raw). The problem is that the wood must be unfinished to allow the moisture to penetrate into the fibers. Even wood that has been stripped of its finish will have blocked pores limiting the effect of the moisture penetration. Extracting moisture out of a convex surface could be undertaken with a household iron. It takes precise judgment to warm up the wood evenly with this method.

Other options may involve an electric blanket. Wrapped in such a blanket we can leave the wood clamped in a certain position. When the panel to be treated is a thick one, sometimes the use of steam is required, for which purpose we can use a steamer.

Warped Tabletop

warped top 3 A very common problem is the warped tabletop, which has been finished on one side. Moisture does penetrate shellac and many of the other classic finishes, but at a highly reduced speed. So the underside will have moved more than the top. If concave cupping is extreme and the integrity of the structure is compromised, a treatment of repeated wetting and drying the convex surface may be applied.


Intrusive methods are the next option, but require more skill and a firm understanding of wood and the consequences of our actions in relationship to wood movement, and restricting such movement.  I normally suggest steering clear of intrusive methods unless you are sure you possess a firm understanding of cause and consequence.  The reason is that most times an intrusive repair is attempted without understanding the cause and consequence, the repair will eventually fail and in many cases will create more damage than you started with.

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