Milling Curly Soft Maple

[Todd McDonald]

I have some curly soft maple i need to mill to aprox 3/4". I have the following tools:

Grizzly 604 jointer
Ridgid planer
LN jack plane
A lot of elbow grease :D

I have never worked wood like this and am afraid of tear out. Should I face joint it, edge joint it and then plane it down some with the power tools? Then finish off to 3/4" with Jack plane and smoothing plane (which I do have the funds to purchase).

Or is a drum sander a be better option? Something I would have to rent or borrow.

Either way what would be the proper protocol?

[David Peterson MN]

I have had good success with my jointer on the edge grain with curly maple but I mainly just use my drum sander for the face grain. I have surfaced alot of curly maple in the last few months. If you use the planer just take off small bites at a time. Overall, I have found that it mills quite nicely, at least that is my experience with it.

[Josiah Bartlett]

If you do decide to use your power tools, make sure your knives are as sharp as possible and take very light cuts. This will minimize tearout. Then leave them a bit over dimension and use the hand tools or sand to bring them to final dimension.

[Lee Schierer]

I usually take a light pass in one direction and check for tear out. If I see any, I take another light pass in the other direction to see if it gets less or more to decide which way to run boards across a jointer or planer. I do this on all four sides.

You'll want a really sharp hand plane if you are going to do the job by hand and may want to consider diagonal passes with the hand plane to reduce tear out.

Sometimes lightly dampening the surface will reduce tear out to a tolerable level that can be cleaned up with sanding.

[Al Weber]

Wet the wood first, irrespective of whether you working the edge or face. I just use a wet sponge and wet everything down just before joining or power planing. Make sure all the blades are sharp. Take very light passes and make sure of which grain pattern leaves the least tear out. If you do all these things, you will still have some tear out but that is part of the game. Alternatively you can use hand tools but I still wet the wood and make sure everything is sharp. But I still get some tear out. By the way, make sure you have a good coat of wax on your ferrous iron tools if you wet the wood. The residual moisture may result in some tool rusting if you aren't careful.

[Dan Forman]

Also running the board over the jointer or through the planer at a skew will help. I would also dampen it with water, mineral spirits, or naptha. Sometimes it will surprise you and come out pretty good.

How thick is the wood to begin with?

You can put a bit of a back bevel on your jack plane iron to give better results with figured wood. Check in the Neander forum for tips about that. If it's a low angle jack (bevel up), you can just sharpen to a higher angle.

How much wood do you have to mill, and what are you going to make from it?

Dan

[jerry cousins]

and another thought - if you can find a planer with a spiral cutter or helix cutter - and with light passess there should be just a minimum of tear out.
jerry

[John Coloccia]

I've found it can be hit or miss with the jointer/planer. As they say, wood's just not going to do what it doesn't want to do. I'd say give it a try with the power tools, taking off a little at a time, and see what it wants to do. If it's working fine, problem solved. I usually have good luck on the edges, but usually have to follow up with a scraper on the face. No biggie. As others have said, hand tools won't necessarily leave a perfect surface either without a bit of scraping/sanding.

If you have the $$$, the Veritas bevel up smoother is real handy to have around.

[Todd McDonald]

The wood is already at 13/16. I am making drawer fronts for a lingerie chest for LOML.

Thanks for the replies.

Todd

[Robert Chapman]

If you are going to buy a new planer or jointer and plan on doing more work with curly or birdseye maple get machines with spiral/helix cutter heads. They work very well with figured maple.

[John Browne]

I have the Ridgid 3-blade planer, and even with new blades I can't run curly or figured big leaf maple through without significant tear out. My solution is to trade up to a spiral planer real soon now.

[Dan Forman]

Well, the good new is that you only have to have one good side if they are going to be drawer fronts, so there is some room for error. If they are flat already and in good shape, you could just take off a 16th from the back, sand and call it good. If they aren't flat, you don't have much wood there to play with to get to 3/4. You could post your location, and start another thread to see if there are any Creekers near you with spiral cutter heads. If you are near Spokane, you could bring them to my shop and I could do them for you.

Dan

[John Michaels]

Find a cabinetmaker with a drum sander . Most will run it through for a modest charge.

[Rick Fisher]

I have Jointed figured maple with straight knives.. I find super slow feeding makes a difference.. I mean really slow.. Light passes and so slow your bored..

A helical head is the ticket for planing.. and a drum sander, or wide belt is the best solution for the final thickness.. even if you have to take plenty of passes.

There is lots of debate over straight knives and helical cutter heads.. figured maple ends the debate.. the helical head really shines on that wood..

[Darrin Davis]

I just made helped someone make a gun cabinet out of walnut and curly maple. the curly maple was used for the raised panels. It started out as 4/4 and we started to plane it down to 3/4. some of it tore out bad and others didn't tear at all. We ended up sanding them to size on a drum sander. To our amazement, we used a shaper to raise the panel and none of them tore in any direction. I'm sure we were lucky or something. The next time I try raising curly maple on a shaper I'm sure it will tear something aweful.