The majority of the furniture I make features highly figured timbers, so I'm constantly dealing with awkward grain and tear out.
The main solutions are a high pitched iron (this could be a high pitched iron in a low angle plane), scraping, sanding, or a closely set cap iron.
The problem with a high pitched iron is it requires a separate tool, and if you go the low angle plane route then achieving the ideal camber becomes a bit trickier. Furthermore, how high pitched should high pitched be? If I worked exclusively with sweet planing Cuban Mahogany it would be an easy decision, 50 degrees and you're sorted. But rippled grain like the Maple I show later requires more than 50 degrees, I've got a Lie Nielsen plane with a 55 degree frog and that cures
most tear out, but not quite
all. If you keep going up the scale, to 60 degrees or higher, then it becomes increasingly difficult to push the plane through the cut. So you're left with the dilemma of deciding on a pitch that cures tear out in the timbers you use, but with a significant penalty in terms of planing
effort if you over egg it and go too high.
The problem with scraping is that achieving flatness with a card scraper is tricky (it takes quite a lot of skill to both start and finish the cut without dubbing over edges), and if you go the scraping plane route then it's a slow tool to use as you've only one sharp edge on the iron and it needs quite a lot of re-sharpening (you get four edges on a card scraper). The 080 style scraper doesn't have quite the sole length of a true scraper plane, but personally I think it's the sweet spot as far as scraping is concerned. However, in truth all scraping is pretty slow as the cuts are so fine, scraping is okay for very shallow tear out but tedious as a solution for serious tear out over a larger area.
Sanding is a good solution if you have a decent drum sander, most people don't possess one so it's more of a commercial solution than a hobbyist fix.
That leaves a closely set cap iron. And for my money it's the best all round solution.
Here's a board of Fiddleback Maple, a timber I use frequently, the rippled figure is actually grain emerging on the surface at a completely different angle. Consequently it's difficult to plane cleanly. This is the result with a plane iron at my normal setting, you can see the big divots that have been torn out and you can also get a sense of how close the cap iron is to the cutting edge.
Here's the same board and same plane (a bog standard Record), but with a closely set cap iron. You'll know when the cap iron is close enough as the shavings start to become slightly crinkly, a bit like an accordion. You don't want too much of this affect, but a bit shows you've set the plane up correctly.
A closely set cap iron just works, and furthermore you can use the plane you've already got in your hands.
One small tip, when you first try a closely set cap it's easy to set the depth of cut too deep, at which point the plane will simply stop working. Creep up on the ideal depth setting slowly and be ready to wind the iron back a fraction if you go too far.
