Thread: Problems hand-planing Australian hardwood

are the soles of both planes flat? What you describe can be a symptom of an out of flat sole.

2 mm clearance to the chip breaker is excessive when smoothing, try re-setting to less than 1 mm.

Originally Posted by ian

are the soles of both planes flat? What you describe can be a symptom of an out of flat sole.

2 mm clearance to the chip breaker is excessive when smoothing, try re-setting to less than 1 mm.

Thanks Ian - I will double check but I'm fairly certain the soles are good. And I will reset the chipbreaker and try again.

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Originally Posted by Nokinian

I have a Stanley Bailey #4 and a recently acquired very old Stanley (has "Pope" branding) #5 (or might be a 6). Both are in good condition and (now) have very sharp blades. Chip breakers are set to about 2mm back and I have not cambered the blades or rounded the corners etc. Throat setting is quite wide.

They plane softwood like it's not there, and will deal reasonably with edges of hardwood boards - say 30mm thick.

However, they seem uninterested in tackling wider hardwood, such as some 90mm wide Bkackbutt table legs I am smoothing down. After dialling in the desired skinny setting on a piece of softwood, the blades seem to just skid across the surface of the hardwood, or alternatively dig in and cause tear-out.

It's probably down to poor technique but has anyone else any other suggestions?



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There are a few possible reasons why you cannot plane:

1. The blade is too dull. It cuts softwood because there is little resistance, but hardwood needs to be penetrated before it can cut. Sharpen the blade.

2. The wood you are cutting is not flat, and the plane is travelling over the peaks and not reaching down into the valleys. It can take several passes to begin cutting. This is especially likely when you set the plane up on a soft wood which is flat (freshly planed). Run a straight edge over the top to check.

3. I can't think of a third (since the plane cuts softwood, the sole must be flat enough - which would be a third possibility).

In line with Ian's comment, interlocked hardwoods such as Blackbutt, will tear out with a common angle plane. One either needs a high cutting angle (e.g. 60 degrees), or a closed up chipbreaker to control tearout. The chipbreaker appears to be the recommendation for your Pope. It needs to be place about 0.4mm behind the back of the blade, and the leading edge of the chipbreaker should first be given a secondary micro bevel of around 50 degrees.

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...ipbreaker.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

Probably not the case, but is the iron advanced too far? Maybe try advancing the iron from no cut until it’s where you want it.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

There are a few possible reasons why you cannot plane:

1. The blade is too dull. It cuts softwood because there is little resistance, but hardwood needs to be penetrated before it can cut. Sharpen the blade.

2. The wood you are cutting is not flat, and the plane is travelling over the peaks and not reaching down into the valleys. It can take several passes to begin cutting. This is especially likely when you set the plane up on a soft wood which is flat (freshly planed). Run a straight edge over the top to check.

3. I can't think of a third (since the plane cuts softwood, the sole must be flat enough - which would be a third possibility).

In line with Ian's comment, interlocked hardwoods such as Blackbutt, will tear out with a common angle plane. One either needs a high cutting angle (e.g. 60 degrees), or a closed up chipbreaker to control tearout. The chipbreaker appears to be the recommendation for your Pope. It needs to be place about 0.4mm behind the back of the blade, and the leading edge of the chipbreaker should first be given a secondary micro bevel of around 50 degrees.

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...ipbreaker.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Derek - the blades are most certainly not dull, so I will rule that one out. I will check the flatness of the workpiece and the setting of the chipbreaker.

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Originally Posted by Fergiz01

Probably not the case, but is the iron advanced too far? Maybe try advancing the iron from no cut until it’s where you want it.

Thanks Fergiz01. I think the blade is set ok as I "calibrate" it first on a piece of softwood so that it takes a thin shaving. I then gradually advance the blade on the workpiece until I suddenly get tear-out.

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What I've done with hardwood with wavy/interlocked grain is to set the blade to a very very thin cut, then hold the plane so the
body is at approx. 45 degrees to the grain and start scrubbing away. If it still doesn't want to bite, even go at an angle to the grain
or right across grain. Take the high spots down ... I've used that with contrary blackwood, saligna, and rimu. Always got it to the point
where I could finish with the cabinet scraper.

Probably not at all ok with the purists, but it's worked for me in the past. [ducks for cover and waits for the flames]

Last three saligna benchtops I did for my kitchen I didn't even get the hand planes out, I must admit. I got a really good match
on the top side (*which means at the bottom too, since everything went through the thicknesser with the same setting) and just finished with the ROS with a progression from 120 to 400 grit. They feel like silk when I run my hand over them.
You could probably show me up with a long straightedge, but - nobody has seen high or low spots with the naked eye (including me). And the plates don't rock.

Blackbutt has a Janka rating of 9.1.

A lightly cambered plane iron (smoothing work) will gain you less resistance as you enter the cut.

Have you checked the primary bevel angle? Did you re grind or just sharpen?

I had that issue when I started planing because I avoided regrinding for so long that I had let the bevel get too steep. As it gets towards 45d it gets closer to sitting flat on the wood and doesn't dig in. Then you advance the blade because it's not cutting and it suddenly digs in. As Derek said it doesn't need to dig in with softwood so maybe that's why it cuts it. Don't know but I know when I had that issue it cut edges ok for some reason.

Everything said so far is valid. Quite a few things to get right with a plane. Our Oz hardwoods are just hard so things have to be just right. For stock removal cutting across the grain or diagonal can sometimes be easier. For finishing smoothing cuts need to be rather fine with a real sharp blade and a slight camber really will help. Only planes I have strait irons on now are for jointing and the shooting board. Was a big surprise coming from the UK where oak and mahogany were seen as hardwoods. Hardwoods here are very hard indeed. Cutting a narrow edge is easier as us mortals can only push so much. Full width shavings have to be very fine indeed. The cambered blade helps here. I also have to admit that sometimes the wood is so hard I say f@&kit and go for the machinery.
Regards
John

Cambering a blade serves three purposes: firstly, with a smoother, it is to prevent tracks that can occur if the corners of a blade cut the wood. On a jointer, camber can aid in positioning the cutting section, that is, steering the cut. A third reason is to deepen a cut, such as with a jack plane, by narrowing the cutting area.

Camber, per se, does not significantly improve the cutting ability (i.e. depth) of a smoother. The camber in a smoothing blade is simply too little to make this type of impact. A jack is different, and then only because it creates a narrower face to the wood. A smoother wants to take a wide shaving, hence the camber cannot be much at all.

In hard woods, after removing the physical properties of a plane (i.e. sole flatness), sharpness is the main factor. If a blade is not sharp, it will not penetrate the wood, and instead skate along its surface. Sharpness does not depend on the bevel angle - witness a plane with a high cutting angle, whether BD or BU, is still capable of wide shavings if the edge is sharp.

BD on WA Sheoak ...




BU on Fiddleback Marrie ...



High bed angle on Jarrah ...



Now sharpness means different things to different people ...

Regards from Perth

Derek

What you've described is, verbatim, my experience with a dull blade.

What's happening is that the blade has developed a "relief bevel" on the contact surface of the wood, so the actual cutting edge is a thousandth of an inch or so above where the blade is contacting the wood.

This explains a number of things. The reason it skates without cutting on hardwoods and appears to perform correctly (key word: appears) in soft wood is that it's easier to compress the surface grain on soft woods, so the blade is being pressed deep enough to overcome the relief bevel. When it cuts a softwood, it cuts it well because, as the name implies, the wood is soft. But when you advance the blade and press it into hardwoods, you get nasty, gouging cuts because the wood is, you guessed it, harder.

I'd hollow grind the blade if you aren't already doing that and then sharpen again. It should cut your arm hair like butter. Almost effortlessly. The shaving test isnt the ultimate test for sharpness but it's 90% of the way there.

The chip breaker is important, especially for smoothing, but that isn't your problem. The only way the chip breaker would cause the blade not to cut is if it was advanced PAST the cutting edge (speaking from experience here...).

For what it's worth, in my lengthy trial and error period with hand planes the answer was almost ALWAYS: you need to sharpen the blade.

Hope that helps,
Luke

An afterthought: it could also be a geometry issue (which is kind of the same thing). Make sure the blade is ground at 25-30 degrees for optimal performance

Hardwood vs softwood; bevel up vs bevel down; double iron vs single iron; camber vs non camber; sharp means sharp, but sharp means different things to different people;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTcRRaXV-fg