Sounds like actual experience is you will be fine. Manufacturers often exaggerate to cover themselves against having to replace stuff customers screwed up. If you want a great DIY rack rock solid yet dirt cheap you are welcome to copy mine. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367
Wood racks and humidity
I'm thinking about upgrading my rack and like the appearance of the Butcher Block Acoustics and some of the Timbernation products. My system resides in a basement, where humidity in summer sometimes reaches 60 percent. I have a dehumidifier, which I run as needed. The previous owner of my house was a musician in a symphony, and he successfully stored sheet music in the basement here, with the aid of dehumidifiers.
The Butcher Block Acoustics website cautions that their racks should be in environments where humidity remains in the 35 to 45 percent range.
Does anyone here have experience with wood racks and higher than recommended humidities? Am I asking for trouble by buying a wood rack rather than something with metal posts and MDF shelves? I expect to move in the future, and a wood rack would look better with other furniture as part of a setup in a room of the house rather than in a basement. For the foreseeable future, the stereo will remain in the basement.
The Butcher Block Acoustics website cautions that their racks should be in environments where humidity remains in the 35 to 45 percent range.
Does anyone here have experience with wood racks and higher than recommended humidities? Am I asking for trouble by buying a wood rack rather than something with metal posts and MDF shelves? I expect to move in the future, and a wood rack would look better with other furniture as part of a setup in a room of the house rather than in a basement. For the foreseeable future, the stereo will remain in the basement.
Showing 2 responses by millercarbon
The problem with wood in this situation, all situations really, is called wood movement. Wood slowly absorbs moisture over time and as it does so it expands. One problem is it doesn’t expand equally or uniformly. Woodworkers know all this and here you can actually calculate how much your rack will move (expand) in your basement https://www.woodworkerssource.com/estimate-wood-movement.html MDF is wood and so no different, except that with MDF it distorts all ugly and loses all strength and never goes back like wood does when moved to low humidity. I would avoid MDF unless dirt cheap and used with the knowledge it may well be a total loss if used there long enough. If you still want wood I would look for a rack that uses wood legs with steel or other hardware attached, as opposed to a solid wood rack where everything is wood connected to wood. That type of construction the movement can physically tear the joints apart unless they were properly designed for this. Since you already know the manufacturer specifies a lower humidity then guess what, it was not designed for this! You can still use wood, you just need to be aware and think very carefully. Otherwise you wind up like a friend of mine, spent months building this beautiful cabinet and when he showed me I said why’s this piece sticking out half an inch? "Wasn’t like that when I put it together!!!" He didn’t know about wood movement. Once you do, look around, people that build stuff like cabinets, raised panel doors, there is a lot more skill and knowledge involved than appears at first glance. |