In Reply to: wood... posted by pollywaffle on Friday, 11. March 2005 at 17:21 Bali Time:
the content of moisture in the wood.
For industrial production and especially for the common tourist crap, they are using „fresh' wood, so the content of moisture inside the wood is high, this works in the countries you have mentioned because of the high humid there, so the wood is drying slowly, very often the wood is also oiled, this helps to avoid a rapidly fluctuation of moisture out of the wood.
The problem is, when you take this wood into a country with low humid (like Australia) the process of drying is so extreme, that tension inside the wood will cause the damage.
The content of moisture inside the used wood should be below 5%, then the wood is appropriate for export.
Usually the process of drying (before the wood can be used for production) will take some years (depending on the wood), the most furniture produced in Indonesia comes from Java, the wood is shipped from all over the Indonesian archipelago for industrial production on Java.
For export to Europe or USA the manufactures will use special drying chambers to increase the process of drying from some years to some weeks ( Ikea would not be pleased to unload some several thousand deck chairs, all cracked due the mentioned problem), for use inside Indonesia they will not do this due the higher costs and because there is simply no need for this.
How to avoid the experience you've already made?
Either you find somebody with a hydro meter to check the content of moisture inside the piece you wane buy, or you will find a small carpenter who is using old wood for his produced furniture (probably difficult), or you buy old pieces of furniture.
Best regards
Thorsten
And a special thank to Roy, who thought some new aspects, just a week ago