Which direction to plane... a helpful guide.

[rafezetter]

I've just found this very easy to follow guide and thought it would be of help to others. Many has been the time when I've looked at grain and not really been 100% sure which way to put it through my planer, so I've guessed. Sometimes it works, sometimes not; as clearly demonstrated in section 2 of the guide.

Fixing tearout can be a real hassle, been there more often than I should have, so hopefully using this guide it'll now only happen with sections of wood with reversing grain.

Hope it helps some of our less experienced members.

Edit - lol whoops

https://www.popularwoodworking.com/proj ... -direction

 

[galleywood]

I can't see a link to guide.

 

[Chris152]

Really useful guide that I've just come back to having made a terrible mess of three glued-up planks of pine with an oak insert - I think I glued the planks with the grain facing in different directions, and the oak grain reverses along its length. It's driven me nuts and may be beyond repair - next time I'll slow right down before I even start prepping the wood and glueing up.

 

[Ttrees]

Really useful guide that I've just come back to having made a terrible mess of three glued-up planks of pine with an oak insert - I think I glued the planks with the grain facing in different directions, and the oak grain reverses along its length. It's driven me nuts and may be beyond repair - next time I'll slow right down before I even start prepping the wood and glueing up.

A good opportunity to learn how to set the cap iron, for it to have full effect then

 

[Neil S]

I take it from this that the direction of grain is reversed when planning with a machine yes?
As the cutter block rotates the blade moves towards you as you push the wood into the machine. The grain should therefore run in the opposite direction to which you are pushing the wood into the machine.

-Neil

 

[Chris152]

A good opportunity to learn how to set the cap iron, for it to have full effect then

Go on, elaborate Tom?! I have no idea...

Neil - no, I'm using (/trying to use) a hand plane, doing a very good job of confusing myself.

Thanks both.

 

[thetyreman]

Really useful guide that I've just come back to having made a terrible mess of three glued-up planks of pine with an oak insert - I think I glued the planks with the grain facing in different directions, and the oak grain reverses along its length. It's driven me nuts and may be beyond repair - next time I'll slow right down before I even start prepping the wood and glueing up.

try a no80 cabinet scraper next time, works a treat on oak, especially difficult oak and reverse grain woods, it might still be repairable, a sharp card scraper will do a good job as well.

 

[Ttrees]

A good opportunity to learn how to set the cap iron, for it to have full effect then

Go on, elaborate Tom?! I have no idea...

Neil - no, I'm using (/trying to use) a hand plane, doing a very good job of confusing myself.

Thanks both.

Hi again
Mr Weaver has gone to extensive lengths to make sure this knowledge is widely available.
It's a real eye opener when you get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAVgfSPMN0

Have fun
Tom

 

[Chris152]

try a no80 cabinet scraper next time, works a treat on oak, especially difficult oak and reverse grain woods, it might still be repairable, a sharp card scraper will do a good job as well.

I'd not thought about one of those before but can see I night need one! It's not just the oak tho - it's also the pine, flat cut with those cathedral shapes that also seem to reverse - though to be honest it's left me confused. I'm going to do some more work on it later, and reckon if at least I can figure out what the grain is doing and wreck the top, I'll have learned a lot.

There's not one board that I haven't read wrong. AND, unknown to me as there was no real side light, I'd dinged a corner of the base of the plane on my vise and it was leaving scratch marks on the wood as I planed. (Sanded back now, but I think you can just about see the scratches toward bottom left, where I was planing the oak to the same thickness as the pine.) Not a great day in the garage!

 

[Chris152]

Mr Weaver has gone to extensive lengths to make sure this knowledge is widely available.
It's a real eye opener when you get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAVgfSPMN0

Have fun
Tom

Yep - I can see that'll make a difference - mine was set at a 'fat 1/16th'! I'll close the gap some and see where I get to. Thanks again.

 

[MusicMan]

+1 for the No. 80 scraper plane recommendation. I'm always using it for such jobs.

 

[Ttrees]

Mr Weaver has gone to extensive lengths to make sure this knowledge is widely available.
It's a real eye opener when you get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAVgfSPMN0

Have fun
Tom

Yep - I can see that'll make a difference - mine was set at a 'fat 1/16th'! I'll close the gap some and see where I get to. Thanks again.

Closing it some will not suffice I'm afraid...
Look at the pics beneath the description in the video for more clarity.
Its noted that the distance to set the cap for it to work fully, is dependent on the angle that the cap iron has on the
leading edge, timber species, and depth of cut.
If I recall correctly David works the angle of the cap iron edge to 50 degrees ...this means that the cap iron can be a hairs breath further back from the iron, than one with a standard cap that's 30 degrees(ish)
I think its 30 ish, from what I seem to recall from Kees mentioning on the subject.

Tom

 

[profchris]

For difficult grain, planing at 45 degrees is often effective. That's what I'd have done here.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

45 degrees or even cross grain? I've just finished a quite gnarly small piece of oak easily going from cross planing to abrasive. It's fine for oak but I don't know how successful it would be the pine, though, it might tear.

 

[profchris]

Good point. I've planed spruce and cedar successfully at 45 degrees, and rarely use pine. Test on scrap ...

 

[Chris152]

I tried this and it made quite a difference - 45 degrees and reduced distance from cap iron to the blade edge. In order to go deeper on the sections with breakout I used my no 4 plane rather than 51/2, which seemed to work and just checked for flatness thinking it might now be like on of those complex putting greens but it does seem reasonable (by my standards).

I checked prices on a no 80 scraper plane and think I might have a go with this next (the Axminster one is a reasonable price) - the oak's being stubborn, i managed to remove most of the area of breakout only to find some more cropped up further down the strip.

Thanks all!

 

[Ttrees]

Did you deem the thin shavings to be too much work?
I bought a no.3 a while ago in an attempt to get work done faster (heavier cut) on reversing bands.
I thought it might be narrow enough to work on the reversing grain of these bands only.
In the end It was not the silver bullet I as after.
The plane comes in handy although not for that application.

Setting the cap is the real fix, but it relies on having a flat enough board to take those thin shavings.
This in turn means you need to have a flat bench to reference your timber on so you can get there.

I'd like to know does anyone either have a few jack planes, with varying set distances for the cap iron,
or change their setting often in order to get the rough work done with lesser and lesser tearout?

Planing diagonally is more suited to boards than narrower stock.
It takes me a while longer to do with a no.80 what can be done with a Bailey.

If you want to try out some scraping for penny's, I made a tutorial a while back called
Make yer own cabinet/card scraper, the cheapest way
Not as impressive as Davids method but its a sure thing.
post1124577.html?hilit=make%20yer%20own%20cabinet%20scraper#p1124577

Good luck
Tom

 

[Phil Pascoe]

If I ever had a broken window to deal with I always kept any shards with slow, gentle curves for use as scrapers - the edge doesn't last long but for delicate work it's great.

 

[Chris152]

Reading around this it seems to be a lot like skinning rabbits!

Thanks for the tutorial link, Tom - unfortunately I don't have a lot of the bits I'd need to do it that way. I bought the Axminster 80 scraper plane at the weekend and am trying to get used to it - I found it works great on the oak which is now breakout-free, and the pine is much improved but it's very soft and will create very fine breakout in areas that the No 4 plane didn't.

I also bought a cheap blade for my 5 1/2 plane so I can try putting a 17 degree bevel on the reverse (to create 'cabinet pitch', apparently?) and will give that a shot soon.

I'm using pine as it's cheap so mistakes aren't too costly, and because I understand it's forgiving when it comes to fitting, but it seems to bring its own set of problems - as you suggest Phil.

 

[Ttrees]

Hi Chris
I don't what you are lacking in your arsenal to get a cap iron close and fitting well.
By the way, I ended up unintentionally making a scrub plane with a corrugated plane sole not so long ago, by hitting a metal staple ...I worked the cap iron after that again just yesterday after some dust was between it and the blade.
I chose some more relief than I normally do to the underside and fell happy about it..
Using my £2.50 400girt DMD hone, It went very fast and a quick hit on the quality very fine diamond stone I have,
was all I needed to do.

I did not mention that the frog needs to be set back for it to work out for you.
If you set it too far forward it will be very difficult to push....
Looks like very difficult to the point of refusing to cut it seems from another video.
If its too far it will crinkle the shavings like an accordion...it just needs to be a breath back.

With a back bevel you will need to take thinner shavings than with the cap iron set close.

There is a few folks on youtube who don't have a grasp on this, yet they have posted videos, and talk about
the effect of the cap iron set close while not showing it the effects properly.
David W was the first to show how to do this properly on video as far as I'm concerned...But maybe not if you count the Kato and Kawai
if that was uploaded before it ...
Good luck
Tom