The wood is a very specific material, which likes to be handled with attention and care.
Due to its grainy texture, its properties are different in different directions. This is also true for its behavior in time.
It takes a long time for the wood to dry completely and, along the way, it is always accompanied by shrinking. Even after it seems good-to-go, the process of drying still continues at a very slow rate. Shrinking due to drying results in relatively small changes in dimension, nevertheless, it has a big impact when working on small high precision details, when even a small skew or deviation can ruin the whole assembly. The shrinking gets non-uniform due to the random grainy texture, and that’s when things can get messy. All the hardly achieved precision goes to waste due to an oh-so-natural process. That’s why the wood likes being loved and cared for 🙂
