by woodness sake » Mon May 13, 2013 2:02 pm
Part of green woodworking is being intimately familiar with the materials you are working with, especially as most of this material is probably hand harvested by you. Boiling certainly does work for some species of wood but completely undoes others and may give different results from different parts of the same tree.
The stresses built up in wood from the bough of a tree will be different than in a branch from the same tree and even along the same branch. A tree growing at the edge of a forest with have different different stresses than a tree that is in a more sheltered area deeper in, even though they are the same species. Remember the mantra: wood is a living material. The events that occur in the life of a tree (or any living thing) will have results, sometimes unpredictable. Experiment and learn then.