Thread: Well trod path - Kanna compared to Bailey..

Originally Posted by IanW

David, what you are looking at is the tangential surface of a wood that has huge medullary rays (all the casuarinas do, with a few exceptions). The rays themselves are as hard as nails, but the parenchyal tissue between them is (relatively) soft. The WA species (Allocasuarina fraseriana) is usually considered one of the 'softer' casuarinas, but is still pretty tough stuff - I've only had a couple of sample bits to play with and while I found them a bit better than the eastern 'forest she-oak' (A. torulosa) it was still up there, with plenty of edge-destroying silica like the rest of them.

Martin, the situation I was describing was when the plane stops because I'm not well-positioned & just run out of reach - I don't need to lift the plane, just re-position myself & put a bit more ooomph behind it & I don't move the plane before finishing the stroke. That may be the difference, I'll have to try deliberately stopping & lifting the plane off the work & see if I get the same effect (got plenty of she-oak to use as demonstration material.. )

Momentum can certainly be your friend, but it comes at a cost! When I built my first infill panel plane, I was greatly impressed by the way it keeps going once started; it just glides through anything in its path:
Attachment 534551

But it comes at a cost, 10 minutes of pushing it around is like 30 minutes of using my 5 1/2. I've never been able to ascertain just how these beasts were used back in their day. I suspect they were reserved for final finishing of parts like bookmatched panels (hence their name??), at which mine excels. It takes the reversing grain of a bookmatch in its stride. I sure would not contemplate using it as an everyday general-purpose jack like the 5 1/2, though!

Cheers,

sounds like they might be a good candidate for a drum sander! hard and soft is OK if the wood is quartered and everything runs that way. When there's crosslinking and varying density running transverse to the ring, it's hard to figure it out!

Buffing can defeat the silica, but if it takes more force to cut the hard bits than the soft bits will support, I've got nothin other than wood filler or french polish! (i don't have wood filler, so if french polish doesn't fix it...)