The planed (not) Corian

[D_W]

Well, I got a chance to cut out all of my sheets today and build two of them up before I had a dinner obligation.

When I returned, I decided to plane one side of the smallest piece I have (sits atop an 18" cabinet on an end). I was only joking when I said that you can plane it, and had already bought a bearing bit for my router. However, after working to cut all of the sheets (quite heavy for a one-man setup - and the kids have littered my shop/garage with their riding vehicles), and gluing them, I decided to plane one edge tonight to see the quality of the seam.

Planing is so easy that I think I'm just going to plane all of it, and spokeshave the sink cutout (and then sand the inside bits). It planes beautifully (though it's hard on the plane iron edge, I sharpened three times to knock all of the glue off of this and my rather unevenly sized strips), and there is no stench in the air of burnt plastic like you get when you cut, rout or sand it.

With three sharpenings, the total time to plane the sides into dead squareness was 15 minutes. Almost nothing at all.

Not a fan of the pattern - everything always looks different in a countertop than it does in a sample, but I have a theory about kitchens. If you don't like what it looks like, you'll get used to it after you see it a dozen times.

https://s22.postimg.cc/csejvcdxd/20180528_151928.jpg
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I will rout a 1/8th radius roundover on it, though. It's sharp in its current state, to say the least. The corners would end up being deposits of kid DNA.

(the stanley 4 in this picture did the planing. Flatness isn't a concern because the top layer is already cut to final size with a track saw, and marked with a 24" starrett...it's pretty good as it is. One line of green marker on the top corner and once it's square, the first stroke that removes the green marker is the last one).

 

[D_W]

The iron in the stanley plane, for those who like cheap, is a 61 or 62 hardness chinese high speed steel iron available on aliexpress.

Is it really HSS? I don't know. What kind? I don't know that, either. I don't think it's comparable to M2, but it's a nice iron so I'm not going to heat it to red hardness just to see if it bounces back (I have done that with muji irons - grind them until they glow to see if they're really high speed).

Those irons are $10, though, and an excellent choice for stock stanley planes (they're not thick).

I didn't venture into using a stock stanley iron for this for several reasons, but the largest of those is that it's not necessary to harsh one of those irons on this stuff. It's a bit sandy. It's much easier to get chinese irons than it is the older stock stanley irons.

No cap iron required.

(I got better at planing it quickly, too -chicken at first to make sure the corners didn't break off at the ends of the cut - but the third side was not more than two minutes total planing time. It fractures off a little bit like planing ebony timber, and will tolerate a surprisingly deep cut - not a jack cut, but one where you can plane it off very cleanly and quickly......just like good ebony).

 

[ED65]

Thanks for the details! I doubt I'll ever be trying to do any fitting with material like this but I hope to get some offcuts to play around with and this could prove invaluable.

...I have a theory about kitchens. If you don't like what it looks like, you'll get used to it after you see it a dozen times.

I tend to agree. I can be very 'visually fussy' as I'm sure many of us here are, but it is amazing how much disregard you can build up for some things your eyes initially objected to, and in not much time at all (thankfully!).

 

[D_W]

One other aside, it cuts fairly easily (easy, but slow) with any of the hard tooth saws that any of us would have around. I have (had) an old hardtooth stanley "fine cut" or "sharptooth" or whatever the 26" saw is in the garbage, because the a tooth bent out on it years ago when I made my bench and then snapped off. I finally replaced it a month ago and it hasn't gone from the shop can to the large can yet.

Perfect thing to cut the solid surface. It cuts too slowly to notice the missing tooth, but after making a few short cuts of the build -up layers (nobody would use it to cut the full sheets, at least not a sane person) flush with the built up countertops, no visible issues with the teeth of the saw (it was destined for the garbage, anyway).

Haven't (and won't) use any decent saws on it.

It's apparent that there is far less vapor in the air using the hand tools than there is the power saw. The smell coming from the fein (tracksaw dust) is pretty nasty. The saw creates a lot of heat (the dust port of the saw is warm from the passing dust). Hand planed and hand sawn, the smell is very little.

None of this is important, but it satisfies curiosity.

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

You got far more ambition than I do! Seem to remember, maybe Fifteen years or so ago, on the "Oldtools List", there were some posts about flatness of offcuts being flat enough to use to affix pressure sensitive silicon carbide paper to, for plane sole flattening. Have you any thoughts on the offcuts?

Also looks like you laminated pieces together for the edges, or did the material arrive this thick?

 

[D_W]

I think it's safe to say that your time is worth more than mine, Tony!

I get stingy on house refurb because it's throw-away money (nobody gets 100% - or anything close - back when they pay other people to work on their houses). That allows me to be not-so-stingy on my hobbies.

In terms of the material, it's just 1/2 sheet with the edge built up with laminations and then planed square. I guess, in theory, you could use it to flatten plane soles, but it would be a somewhat expensive way to do it if you had to glue it together. If you didn't laminate it perfectly, it would flex on a surface when you put pressure on it, and if you used just nominal sheet thickness, it would conform to a surface pretty easily.

My go-to for that work is a 42 inch long glass shelf on my bench (laid on a spot that I had carefully planed very flat). There's nowhere on the surface of the glass that I can get a 1 1/2 thousandth feeler under a starrett straight edge no matter how hard I lean on it (and if more is needed than that, i file - I've learned to file well enough to file a sole well under 1 1/2 thousandths on infill smoothers, though we'll see if wood movement steals that away over time).