planing birds eye maple

[Jason Beylerian]

i have a question about planing birds eye maple. i have tried google searching with no help. my wood coach says when you plane birds eye, it sometimes rips the eyes out and it leaves a divot. he thinks he read somewhere if you dampen it with a sponge, the eyes wont pull out so easy. im sure there are many people here that are willing to help. there are probably some other tricks too that i can learn.

thanx in advance.

[Joe Jensen]

Slightly dampening the wood will help. Very sharp knives are essential. Still, with fresh knives and dampening the wood you may still have tearout. I was never able to get perfect results with birdseye and curly maple and straight knives.

[glenn bradley]

Its not just the eyes and not just maple but the locations where grain direction reverses or is a bit wild in many materials that torture me. The spiral head on my jointer leaves a beautiful finish in these materials; no issues there. I try to plane on the side that shows the least because my planer is not a spiral and even with razor sharp knives I still get tearout in highly figured woods. Although the cost could buy many other things, I believe my next big dollar item will be a spiral head planer.

P.s. A wide sander would be great too. Decisions, decisions.

[Steve Bracken]

i have a question about planing birds eye maple. i have tried google searching with no help. my wood coach says when you plane birds eye, it sometimes rips the eyes out and it leaves a divot. he thinks he read somewhere if you dampen it with a sponge, the eyes wont pull out so easy. im sure there are many people here that are willing to help. there are probably some other tricks too that i can learn.

thanx in advance.

Try one rough cut, then a few very thin finish cuts before planing to dimension. This should give you some idea about how the final finish cuts will turn out.

If the result isn't good, then rough cut and scrape to finished size, or find someone with a thicknessing sander to help you out.

[Jeff Monson]

I've had limited success with dampening figured maple, razor sharp blades and dampened wood, I still have gotten tearout. I will only use a well sharpened smoothing plane or my drum sander when it comes to figured wood now.

[Steve Griffin]

This is the sort of frustrating thing which can lead one to more tool purchases.

For myself, I chose to keep the old fashioned workhorse straight knifed planer and invest in a belt sander. Others soup up the planer with helical, spiral, insert heads or whatever, but I've never regretted going to a thickness sander.

If new tools are out of the question, then take small passes with the planer and determine your best feed direction. Then, use a 6" ROS aggressively to take out the smaller chips. Then, use a little epoxy to fill the bigger flaws.

-Steve

[Mark Woodmark]

I've had limited success with dampening figured maple, razor sharp blades and dampened wood, I still have gotten tearout. I will only use a well sharpened smoothing plane or my drum sander when it comes to figured wood now.

+1 for the drum sander. Keep in mind it wasnt meant to be a planer though

[Steve Bracken]

+1 for the drum sander. Keep in mind it wasnt meant to be a planer though

true dat.

A local cabinet shop, or lumber supplier may well have a thickness sander, which will be cheap to use, and will reduce most things to a finished dimension pdq.

[Leo Voisine]

Same here.

I tried the new knives, dampened, light cuts, etc.

I found nothing to work well.

The problem is the grain reversing direction.

I found a used 16-32 drum sander - and now I do not have that problem anymore.

[Peter Quinn]

Birseye is a tough one. Think of all those little eyes as cross grain, and imagine the planers knives going cross grain with that many opportunities to tear out. I've seen birdseye tear out on a sharp spiral head planer too. Spirals are great, but no sure thing with this one. No matter what the planer head style, it is still "lifting" a bit as it spins, and it can lift eyes right out of the wood, or at least lift enough to cause problems. I use a drum sander. It takes longer but the results are fairly consistent.

From my experience and what I've read, birds eye is one species actually better suited to be used as a rotary cut veneer. The figure is more pronounced than sawn veneers from solid stock or most sold stock it self. So consider using veneer for applications which call for a birdseye grain, and avoid the whole "how to plane birdseye" question entirely! Take a look at some veneer sites selling rotary cut AAA birseye veneer and look at the solid stock you have. See the difference?

[Darnell Hagen]

Freeze it. Seriously.

[Glen Butler]

When I have tough stuff or for final sanding on large quanities I take it to a planing mill and run it through their wide belt. Well worth the small cost to save the headache.

[Eiji Fuller]

Freeze it. Now thats a good one. Time to invest in a walk in freezer. Not saying it wont work just funny is all. especially for large boards.

Ive got 120 bf of birdseye 8/4 12' and 16' Now thats a big freezer.

[Ken Platt]

The dampening works somewhat, as others have noted. Because water seemed like a bad idea around my machines, I have used mineral spirits instead. This may be a fire hazard, so be careful. I don't have anything around that generates sparks or flame, but flammable is probably an understatement in describing mineral-spirits-dampened shavings.

It sure is disheartening to see that beautiful board come out with a whole bunch of divots where the eyes used to be. Also as others said, this is why wide belt sanders were created. I have the little Jet 10/20 and love it for just this reason (and wish I'd gotten the bigger one!)

Ken

[Robert Chapman]

I work with birdseye and curly maple a lot and the best investment I have made is my jointer and planer with Byrd Shelix Helical cutter heads. No tearout. I still use my drum sander to get out the slight scallops I get with the planer. It's the only really consistent way to avoid tearout with these maples.

[keith micinski]

I have never worked with any kind of figured wood untill today. I have a piece of curly Birdseye maple and all I did was wet the surface with mineral sprirts and take a very light pass. It came out perfect.

[Steve Griffin]

I have never worked with any kind of figured wood untill today. I have a piece of curly Birdseye maple and all I did was wet the surface with mineral sprirts and take a very light pass. It came out perfect.

Sounds like a fire hazard to me. :eek:

-Steve

[keith micinski]

Your actually worried that wiping .01 of an ounce of mineral spirits on a board would somehow be ignited by the friction of a spinning blade? At that point I would be more worried about a Meteroite hitting my shop while I was in it.

[Steve Griffin]

I wouldn't worry a bit if it was .01 of an ounce. But I'm also certain that amount would do absolutely no good. Surely you are using at least an ounce for a panel?

I didn't say a fire was likely, nor that the spinning blades would cause it. I'm sure you are familiar with dust collection fires, or sparks created by a hidden staple etc.

When I was a mountaineer I used to say any time you can avoid an extremely unlikely accident you should. Take a 1/1000 chance of a bad result 1000 times, and statistically you are in trouble.

-Steve

[Arnold E Schnitzer]

Dampen the wood slightly, and hand plane across the grain only with a razor-sharp smoothing plane with the throat almost totally closed. If that doesn't work, sand it!

[Van Huskey]

My frst choice would be a helical head, second drum/belt sander, third would be dampening the wood.

[Jason Beylerian]

thanx guys for your help