Gave it a coat of BLO, then sharpened the blade for some formal test cuts.
What I thought was going to be the complete Laminator turned out to be more like "The end grain strikes back".
It still takes shavings along the grain OK
Attachment 495564
but end grain is not good. There is what I believe is called crushed grain to varying degrees. Tried setting the blade to as fine a cut as possible and this helped a bit. This is the best I could get on pine. Blackwood is worse and oregon is terrible.
Attachment 495563
The blade is sharpened to about 29 degrees. This seems odd to me but my technical understanding of such things is limited. It could be related to the fact that the blade is tapered.
Bed angle is 45 degrees. Wondering if it would be better to sharpen to a higher angle such as 35 degrees to help keep the edge longer or try 25 degrees.
Any comments / discussion related to potential causes and solutions is welcome.