how much tear out is acceptable

[DuncanvdH]

I generally buy my wood machined to size, but often (and in the last order of some exotic African hard wood I keep forgetting the name of) there is serious tear out, that will not easily plane, scrape or sand out.
I was wondering how much tear out you would accept...


Regards,

Duncan

 

[joiner_sim]

Where I work all the timber gets machined for me and then I'm left to work with it. Sometimes it's great and other times its appauling. With regards to tear-out I would say if you are paying for the wood to be machined to size tear-out which is deeper than 3 or 4mm becomes unacceptable. However at the same time it can be hard to prevent this if it's not visible which way the grain runs until after machining.

 

[DuncanvdH]

Thanks,

It's about a mm.

But the only thing I can do is sand it and use epoxy resin to make it smooth.
Cannot sand a mm off..

Duncan

 

[Ironballs]

One mm is more than acceptable, try buying a bubinga board that isn't full of tearout! If you're wanting to work with difficult woods on a regular basis then you're going to have to get yourself some very good planes and a good system for sharpening your blades, blade sharpness is everything.

My personal recommendation would be a low angle jack plane, a good quality smoother such as the Veritas bevel up and a good scraper plane such as the LN or LV #122. For that lot you'll be looking at over 600 quid if bought new.

If you're budget won't stretch to that then experiment with a good jack or smoothing plane and trying skewing the cut and altering the bevel angle on the blade. And get a card scraper for a few quid

 

[joiner_sim]

Or if you want the rough n ready option......... belt sand it out 8-[ :mrgreen:

 

[Saint Simon]

After a few years of not coping with tear-out on pine boards, especially around knots, I threw a bit of money at the problem and bought a Veritas 112 scraper plane. I did this reluctantly as I had heard that as a breed scraper planes were hard to set up and then hard to use. But I wish I had done it years ago. Within 30 minutes of taking it out of the box it worked. Miraculous! I have had it about a month now and love using it. I work in a school and this has been finishing-woodwork-projects-time and this year, for the first time, finishing pine boxes has been a dream. I have tried it on some hardwood boards and that seems very promising too.

 

[JonnyD]

The way to avoid this is to use a thicknessing drum or wide belt sander which will get a tear out free finish on wild and interlocked grain.

http://www.axminster.co.uk/product-Jet- ... -32808.htm

Jon

 

[wizer]

I think technically if you order wood that is 'prepared' then that should mean the wood is perfect. But we all know that's never going to happen. You need a good sharp smoothing plane and some patience, I'm afraid

 

[FatFreddysCat]

You'd be surprised how much use the humble cabinet scraper gets in our shop. We all have a few hand scrapers and a No. 80 scraper but other than that it's low angle block plane with adjustable mouth and sanding blocks (pieces of MDF with 80 grit one side and 150 grit on the other put on with contact glue). Some of our work is hardwood lipped laminated MDF sometimes with linoleum inserts, etc. so we need to hand finish flush to surface a fair bit. Machines can't quite do this so we hand finish. Note that I don't mention smoothing planes because the standard Record/Stanley smoother often won't cope with rowed or wild grain stock for a variety of reasons. The techniques I quote are traditional, portable and don't cost a fortune either

How much tear-out is acceptable? The answer is none. At least not in the finished product. If our wood machinist gave me stuff with 3 to 4mm deep tear out in it I'd be less than impressed because he's supposed to know how to combat tear out. 1 to 2mm I'll live with as we always start oversize in any case. Filler has its' uses but preferably not in the face of solid wood where it will shout out once any sort of finish is applied. That's an automatic "pull" with most commercial customers.

 

[woodbloke]

How much tear-out is acceptable? The answer is none. At least not in the finished product.

I agree. Some tear out during the machining process is usually inevitable but can be resolved during the making either with the use of a finely set smoother and/or a combination of scraper planes and sandpaper. There should be no visible tear out on the finished job - Rob