Thread: Hand planing difficult wood - order of operations?

I think even when using a cambered iron you should be taking clean cuts. These cuts will be thick scallops rather than shavings, but it's still important to ensure the cambered blade is sharp, plane in the right direction, don't set the blade too deep. If you don't, the tearout you get with cambered blades can be something nasty. Tearout should be avoided at all stages of planing imo

Is there a way to summon Derek to a thread?


If it were me and you needed to hog a fair bit off to take a twist out I'd be looking at a scrub or toothing plane. I'd use the scrub across grain whereas the toothing plane can be used with the grain. Once flat, it depends on how much alternating grain you actually have. Sometimes a really sharp smoother taking wafer thin shavings or a scraper plane... Or if there's a lot of alternating grain you may need a really high angle plane to deal with that. And most of all, a sh&t tonne of elbow grease.

To be honest. Unless I have the machines for it, I avoid Australian alternating grain woods. The sh6t fight ain't worth it.

Minimise the Twist. If you have a metre of timber with 10 mm of twist and you cut it in half, then each piece will have only 5 mm of twist. You have halved the twist you need to eliminate! Pre-cut your timber to length plus ~5-10%.

Only Plane the High Spots. Place your timber on a flat surface and rock it - it will pivot on the diagonally opposite low corners. The other two corners are the high corners - mark them. Draw a curve from the midpoint of an end to the midpoint of a side, encompassing the high poit corner. Repeat with two more curves parallel to the first and about a third of its width. Repeat on other end of plank. [See drawing] Mark areas A, B and C, on both ends.

Twist.jpg

Now, starting on one end and using a sharp, cambered blade as recommended by Yoboseyo:

1. Makes three passes over the area A, then
2. Three passes over combined area AB, then
3. Three passes over combined area ABC, then
4. Repeat on other end of plank.

Lay plank with planed side down on flat surface and note remaining twist. (Remember, everything is reversed) Marke planing curves again, probably larger than initial, and repeat, taking finer cuts as twist is reduced.
Repeat until twist has gone, the switch to flat smoother blade.

This works for me. Others, with a better eye for twist, will attack the surface directly with a scrub plane.

PS: Use chalk or a soft pencil to mark curves. Textacolour is impossible to remove!

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

If you have a metre of timber with 10 mm of twist and you cut it in half, then each piece will have only 5 mm of twist. You have halved the twist you need to eliminate!

On this, do you get a visible glue line? After you get rid of the twist, the edges aren't square, and after squaring the edge, the grain doesn't exactly match

My preferred method is using either a LA jack with a high angle blade to give a 55 degree cutting angle; or a normal BD plane but with a 10 or 15 degree back bevel. Either set up allows you to take fairly deep cuts but the high cutting angle means it is a lot harder to push the plane through the timber. The payoff is minimal tear-out.

You can also hit it first with a belt sander fitted with a 60 grit belt.

IMG_0011.jpg

Originally Posted by Carriage

I've recently been trying to build something with shining gum that's a bit knotty and has some reversing grain I believe and had been having issues with tearout. From my previous thread I've improved my plane setup and seem to be able to clean up the tearout well enough with fine shavings and a sharp iron.

I've been trying to get some twist out of the board and to do all the work with the fine shaving would take forever. Is the "normal" method to estimate the tearout you'll get and just take the heavier shavings to get the board flat with the ideal level just below the depth of the tearout and then clean up after? Will traversing effectively limit the tearout to a moderate amount? Does a cambered iron affect the amount of tearout?

Obviously I can try these things out when I get a chance but was after some guidance.

I’ve not worked with Shining Gum, and my comments are how I might approach your challenge.

Firstly, it needs to be said that your description of the sample of SG is not the best. I have read that it is difficult to dry and apt to check, but commercially is available as a clear, pinky-yellowy pale wood. Attractive. Your sample, with its knots and twist sounds better suited to the firewood pile. Timber with interlocked grain, apt to tear out, is rarely a problem, but its presentation needs to be worth it. Your sample does not. I would likely select better.

Secondly, Graham has given a good overview of planing high spots. This may be appropriate, depending on the thickness you will be left with at the end. If not, then sawing narrower strips, rejointing and glueing may be necessary. A lot of work if the appearance is not desirable.

Thirdly, while a sharp blade is a given, light strokes are inappropriate here … unless you want the exercise and have a lot of time on your hands. Not a race-against-the-clock kind of time, but getting it done in a reasonable period. In other words, you want to take thicker shavings. You will not do this with a high angle plane as it is much harder to push. The plane of choice for me is a jack plane across the grain to remove most of the waste, and then another, but with a closed up chipbreaker to smooth it off. Working across the grain (traversing) will minimise tearout, and a closed up chipbreaker should defeat any tearout when smoothing.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by yoboseyo

On this, do you get a visible glue line? After you get rid of the twist, the edges aren't square, and after squaring the edge, the grain doesn't exactly match

I think you might be mis-reading Graemes's instructions, ybs, he's talking about twist, not cupping. I think what was meant is to cut the board to a little more than the actual length required, thus minimising the amount of twist that needs removing to get a flat face.

Don't worry about edges at this stage, the typical order for preparing a rough board begins by flattening one face and squaring one edge. Then you gauge the thickness required & flatten the second face & finally saw or plane the remaining edge parallel.

Wood is a highly variable material, so it's impossible to be too prescriptive in your approach to any one example - one can only use general guidelines. I work on the "rough-out & refine" principle, which I think most do, at least to some extent. It's a fair rule of thumb that the more rapid means of stock removal, for e.g. deeply cambered single-iron blades as on a scrub are also going to be less controllable so it's a matter of weighing the costs & benefits. You want to get that face ready with a minimum of time & effort, but you certainly want to minimise any tear-out beyond the aimed-for finished surface, so my approach is to try to keep the "collateral damage" as small as possible at each stage.

By using the more aggressive planes judiciously you can usually prevent or minimise unwanted stock removal (tear-out), e.g only working on the high spots with the coarse tools, & working obliquely across the grain - the fibres are easier to separate this way so it both reduces effort & tear-out (usually!). I switch to a lightly-cambered jack as soon as the surface is reasonably flat (but nay still be quite furrowed in places from the more aggressive plane(s) preceding it), because I can now start taking advantage of a cap-iron to control reasonably thick shavings (~4 thou or so). A jointer may or may not be involved, it depends on the length of the board & what corrections were necessary. Finally, a smoother comes into play. If all is well and the cap-iron is doing its job, I can take relatively coarse shavings (2-4 thou) if necessary, until the surface is very close, then finish with a plane set to take 1-1.5 thou shavings for that final "polish".

That's a typical scenario, however, many of our hardwoods, particularly the harder eucalypts & desert acacias do not read the script & can be extraordinarily difficult to plane to a fine surface. In addition to their hardness & silica content, they tend to be short-fibred and brittle so that the cap-iron can't turn the shaving smoothly - it crumbles & compresses instead of acting as a 'beam' & levering up at the cutting edge. This doesn't control tear-out like it does on an equally hard wood with higher 'beam strength'. Ironically, the finer the shaving, the worse this effect can be. The problem is further exacerbated when the grain is not parallel but ducking & diving around due to wavy figure or around knots, so that fibres aren't parallel with the surface. And as a final insult, these sorts of woods can work their way under the best-prepped cap-iron, with consequent catastrophic loss of performance.

A high cutting angle works almost as well for me as a cap-iron much of the time & in some woods, better, because I don't get fibres jammed under the cap-iron. It's easier for a beginner to come to grips with a high-angle cutter - just sharpen up & go instead of spending time faffing about getting cap-irons lapped to perfection & learning to set them just-so. But the trade-off is more effort planing & more frequent sharpening. The surface usually isn't quite as good as it can be off a standard-pitch cutter either, so I prefer to use a standard-pitch/cap-iron smoother as much as possible.

I've been using planes for 60 plus years and would consider myself a reasonably competent journeyman, but I occasionally strike boards that refuse to yield to a 'normal' approach. It doesn't happen as frequently as it once did (I'm better at avoiding the really tough stuff as much as dealing with it! ). Either my scraping plane (or a card scraper if it's a small area) can be a boon at times, & if all else fails (shhh, don't tell anyone, there are abrasives). The Cognoscenti tend to despise sanding & look on it as a failure of virtue & technique (imo, the biggest drawback is the dust!), but they still have a place in my shed.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by yoboseyo

On this, do you get a visible glue line? After you get rid of the twist, the edges aren't square, and after squaring the edge, the grain doesn't exactly match

After you get rid of the twist, then you have to joint the edges to get them square.

To get an "invisible" glue line then I think that it is counterproductive to start with a lot of twist. We are really talking about converting difficult timber into something usable, not great.

Originally Posted by DerekCohen

I’ve not worked with Shining Gum, and my comments are how I might approach your challenge.

Firstly, it needs to be said that your description of the sample of SG is not the best. I have read that it is difficult to dry and apt to check, but commercially is available as a clear, pinky-yellowy pale wood. Attractive. ...

I avoided saying anything about shining gum because I basically do not like the stuff.

There are effectively two "types" of shining gum - Eucalyptus nitens - available:

• Old growth, marketed as shining gum, from Vic/NSW and which has properties similar to mountain ash, according to bootles, and
• Plantation grown, marketed as "nitens" and which may be identified by the 10 mm growth rings. It is an extremely soft timber, about the same hardness as radiata, even though a hardwood. Soft and bland, in my opinion.

CSIRO Timber division worked out how to kiln dry nitens about 10 years ago, so that is no longer a problem.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

,,,,,,, It is an extremely soft timber, about the same hardness as radiata, even though a hardwood....

I was imagining from the initial description that it is as hard-as-nails like Forest red-gum or one of the other mongrel woods that I prefer to avoid.

Of course, even softer woods can offer plenty of challenge if they choose. Camphor laurel is normally a doddle to plane but I've come across an occasional bit that gave me a very hard time getting it licked into shape!

Cheers,

You need a common pitch plane or something similar with a chipbreaker here. Set the chipbreaker about twice as far from the edge as you intend to take a shaving with.

This will be an intolerable job any other way. With a chipbreaker, it'll just be annoying.

As most people do little but smoothing and isolated corner clipping with thick shavings (on a twisted board, for example) ,the chipbreaker is often brought about as a tool to be used for finish smoothing. Where it's real economic value was .....was in what you're doing. Dealing with stock that you can't take any appreciable thickness of shaving with and need to constantly sharpen. The chipbreaker will relieve you of both of those burdens. You will need to sharpen, of course - that's a matter of effort economy, but you will get far more done between sharpenings with it.

The wood hardness you're working isn't ungodly. I very often dimension rosewoods and some ebonies with a common stanley plane, but it took me a couple of years to sort through what the chipbreaker could do and not do and how to use it. It took a week to figure out how to control tearout efficiently with it. I don't want to overstate what I mean by years - by that I don't mean "can you", I mean "can you do it and it's practical and not just a matter of you can".

You could plane your board with a 63 degree chinese smoother with a high angle or a bevel up plane at some similar figure. It's not practical for anything other than smoothing.

So, find a stanley plane or something of the sort, and all you need to do is this:
* make sure the chipbreaker mates to the iron and the front edge and face are in decent shape (they can be honed through a medium stone and then with metal polish if needed).
* set the cap iron right at the edge of the iron as close as you can see no iron sticking out, and then move it off of the edge a very small amount. Put the plane in wood and start at zero cut depth and adjust until the shaving starts to straighten. This is where the cap is fully engaged - when the shaving is very straight
* Taking what you learned, then you can back off the cap iron to do something similar on a thicker shaving - you would typically like to work at a depth just before the shaving fully straightens

You don't need perfect tearout control with this type of work, but you need it "very good" so that the shavings don't come apart. You're trying to create a situation where you are removing successive material with a continuous cut.

And ultimately leave behind a surface where the tearout is minor enough that routine smoothing will remove it.

Everything becomes accessible for hand dimensioning if you learn this. This is the part that's critical with a plane if you want to do much with planes - learning to control the more coarse work, not so much the smoothing work.

I would anticipate if you're using something like a jack plane, you'll find in wood that's as hard as camphor that a shaving about half a hundredth is plenty if it's close to full width.

With cherry in the states, it could be double that. With something like ash it could be in between. Don't obsess over numbers, but rather the controlled feel of removing stock that isn't tissue thin and the realization that you can do it if the cut stays continuous with the cap iron without constant sharpening and without risk of really doing a lot of damage. The cap iron will stand you still like a bulldozer if you set the depth too deep - rather than allowing you to accidentally pry up huge tearout slivers of wood.

This is cherry, but illustrating this shaving type as I was sizing a piece of wood to make a base moulding for a cabinet.

https://i.imgur.com/FDWoPOG.jpg

The fact that it's a smoother is misleading -I have it set heavy and it's made of cocobolo and the plane is big -I use it as a middle plane when something doesn't need to be jointer flat.

https://i.imgur.com/jr9O8ZI.jpg

here's an array of shavings from this - continuous shavings vs. not give you a deceptive advantage. It doesn't seem like you're doing more work, but if you have intermittent or broken shavings, you'll be removing a volume of only 1/4th or 1/3rd as much wood per stroke, and you'll also be removing uneven thicknesses and dealing with an iron going in and out of the cut.

Not much of this stuff is discussed well on the internet because it's little done or people run into problems and make an incorrect assumption. For example, it's common to see someone suggest that a stanley plane runs out of gas once you get to a certain level of hardness, but that's not true. It becomes aggravating to use in hardwoods if you can't control tearout enough to keep the plane in the cut. Solving that problem is far more useful than going to a different plane, and I've been through the whole ringer and this was the last stop. The wringer was high angle planes, bevel up planes, low angle planes, scraping planes. they are all relatively uncommon historically for a good reason - they aren't practical for much other than smoothing.

I guess I'm postbombing at this point - by wanted to mention if you look at the shavings in picture 2 - they aren't both the same. You're not looking to observe shavings all looking identical as you'll find some shoot straight up when the cap is set right and some show evidence of being worked, but they curl diagonally like the other one in the picture - they just don't break to pieces with splinters or curl into a perfect ball that settles in the plane throat. If they do, the cap really isn't holding the wood.

Obviously, if you get to a continuous area and the shaving stays unbroken, you're on the right track.

This is middling planing on really hard wood. Jack work on really hard wood can be difficult if your jack has a lot of camber, but you can also set the cap on a jack, and since figuring this out, I've found some old texts starting with the early 1800s to the late 1800s.

To the extent that you can plane downgrain first and not have the cap iron be needed, that's great. To the extent that you can't, you rely on the cap iron. the old texts do mention using the cap iron on the jack plane so that you can control tearout even when the planing is a rough go. I have had to do that once in a while, but having to do a lot of jack work with the cap set is an indication that the wood is a bit beyond reasonable for hand work, and it would probably be a rough go with a machine planer, too (breakout that you still have to chase iwth hand planes or a drum sander - I don't have a drum sander).

Lastly, if you master this and get a feel for it, suddenly the occasion that you might want to use a portable powered hand planer will be a lot easier. It's far faster to use a plane than the biggest and coarsest of portable belt sanders, but it's not faster to use a hand plane than it is to use a 700 watt hand held planer to do the bulk work. But it sure easier to not ruin work with a hand held power planer after getting a feel for rough planing and creating an initial level service. I had a world of trouble with a hand held planer and then this year broke out the hand planer on a huge slab that wasn't reasonable to reach across and it's suddenly easy to use it to prep for middle and later planing.

The amount of dust and chips that it creates instead of clean solid shavings...a little less easy to deal with. would be better used outside on a breezy day.

point being here that maybe sometimes wood will be gnarly enough that you have to use the "middle planing" results I described above and not jack planing. Keep something like a scrub plane far away from any of this stuff. It will create more problems in reversing grain than it will solve.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

SNIP

Derek

Ah!! There you are!



Mods, is there a way to add a [summon Derek] radio button to a thread when someone has a challenging task?