: A group of us just built 13 SOF's. I added a bit of fabric softener to the
: soak water & it definatelly seemed to help. 4 years ago I used wood
: from the same air dried ash plank for ribs & broke about 20%. This
: year, with the fabric softener, I broke or cracked none! WoooHoooo!
: (mostly we used white oak, but prolly about 40 ribs were the same ash as
: last time.)

BUT- how does your experience with the ash compare to the oak you hacked off from that fresh log?

If you use the right stock you will have very little breakage, if any, even if you don't soak it. Soaking kiln dried wood is akin to soaking unpopped kernels of popcorn after they've been cooked. Some of them might pop. Maybe. But- nobody would buy a bag of kernels that went through the oven and didn't pop and expect to get nice fluffy popcorn out of it.

The info I've read on steam bending says that you should use stock at around 25% moisture content. I borrowed a meter and checked my straight-grain QS air-dried ash and it was at about 18, so I soaked it until it was 23%, but I didn't soak enough stock and ended up using some stock that I hadn't soaked. When I bent it I didn't break any of either the soaked or unsoaked. I won't bother soaking it next time.

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