planing finish off reclaimed lumber

[joe milana]

I'm looking at some reclaimed 2" thick maple lumber (about 700 bf) with some kind of urethane or laquer finish on it. What issues would I face (if any) when planing the old finish off to reuse the lumber? (I have a byrd head planer)

[Prashun Patel]

Scan it for hidden metal before.

[Jason White]

I'd use an old set of planer knives until the finish is gone. Then switch to the good ones. Otherwise, hit them with a belt sander before planing.



I'm looking at some reclaimed 2" thick maple lumber (about 700 bf) with some kind of urethane or laquer finish on it. What issues would I face (if any) when planing the old finish off to reuse the lumber? (I have l a byrd head planer)

[joe milana]

Most definitely scan for metal! I have a byrd head planer and the knives are just about ready to be rotated so I could do this job, and then change 'em. I was worried about the finish gumming up and making a mess or something. I've never done this before...

[Tony Joyce]

Finish is rough on planer blades, try to cut below the finish with each pass. Meaning the board should come out clean on one side with each pass.

This is just "my" opinion, based on my experience.

[Ron Jones near Indy]

Could this possibly have been a gym floor? If so gym seal is a tough finish. Tony's suggestion of taking it off at one time makes sense to me if your planer can handle it.

[joe milana]

Here is a picture of it. The seller claims it is solid maple from a retail store display and is anxious to get rid of it. This is only part of the wood. There is more. I am waiting on an address so I can go see it. Looks like a bunch of fir 2 x 4's to me...But, if its hard Maple, and he accepts my ridiculous offer, I may may have a potential gloat!

[Steve Schoene]

Clear finish itself should destroy planer blade, compared to rough sawn lumber which often has gritty dirt. Paint, with metal oxide pigments is harder on planer blades, but short of hitting metal, (or putting lead dust into the air) you are still just calling for blades to be sharpened or replaced a little sooner. Take the $40 or so cost for doing that, and divide it up on a board foot basis and it should be a big deal.

[Rich Engelhardt]

There's an edge jointing jig for a table saw you can make that would be perfect for removing the finish & saving wear and tear on the planer blades.

I made one a couple of years ago and use it every so often to "edge joint" plywood.

If you google "edge joint table saw", it's the one that buries the blade in a sacrificial fence.

[Prashun Patel]

Looking at yr haul, and accounting for all the effort of the other methods, I think the least effort is to just plane them all with a sacrificial set of knives.

[Myk Rian]

Instead of using up the carbide cutters on the planer, you might want to use up a set of jointer knives instead.

Another thought. Use a brush on paint stripper to remove it.

[Alex Leslie]

+1 on jointing it off first. This will give you a flat face to reference when thickness planing. It looks like a 6" jointer should work on any board in the back of that truck.

[Kurt Cady]

I'm more asking the question than recommending a solution, but what about reasawing the finish off with a bandsaw first?

[george wilson]

A close up of the grain of the wood would help us identify it if you wish. It's easy to tell maple from fir.

[Brandon Weiss]

There's an edge jointing jig for a table saw you can make that would be perfect for removing the finish & saving wear and tear on the planer blades.

I made one a couple of years ago and use it every so often to "edge joint" plywood.

If you google "edge joint table saw", it's the one that buries the blade in a sacrificial fence.

I agree with Rich. I had a bunch of 2x3 boards that I coated with Thompson's Water Seal for a deck project. A change in plans left me with about 15 pieces of this stuff already sealed. I wanted to use it for another project so I took it to the table saw and sliced off the edges with the sealer on them. I didn't use a jig like Rich mentions but seeing this jig now I might make one. I don't have a planer or a jointer either so I was limited on tool options. It seems to me though that a table saw would be easiest to remove the coating. No need to change planer knives and even if you don't have a sacrificial TS blade laying around, you can get one very cheap from a borg.

[Philip Rodriquez]

Use your TS or a belt sander first. A nice 36 grit belt will work wonders!

[Tony Bilello]

There is no way that a normal finish will damage a blade. It may gum it up slightly, but not cause any excessive wear. If you are worried about wear, dont buy the maple, buy balsa wood instead.

[Brandon Weiss]

There is no way that a normal finish will damage a blade. It may gum it up slightly, but not cause any excessive wear. If you are worried about wear, dont buy the maple, buy balsa wood instead.

Damage, highly unlikely. Dull faster, absolutely. I'd much rather dull blades cutting maple than cutting anything with finish on it. Even if planing/jointing with a finish on it doesn't dull the blades right away that would be what I consider avoidable and unnecessary wear and tear. Might as well take care of all that expensive equipment.

[Joe Chritz]

You have carbide inserts, scan for metal and run it. Using reclaimed lumber is necessarily harder on equipment. Using you equipment for what it is designed isn't abuse, its use.

Remember that very similar carbide is what is used to machine steel in mills and the like.

I likely wouldn't do anything until I was using it for a project so the wear would be spread out over time.

Joe

[John Lanciani]

I agree with Joe C. about using your tools for what they're made for, go for it. I'd do all of it at once and get it over with, though. I suspect that you'll have more knife wear from grit and dirt than from the finish, and if you do it all at once you can just rotate your carbides when you're done if you need to and not have to worry about it again.

If you need to justify it, compare the cost of the wood plus 1/4 of the cost of a complete set of inserts (Byrd inserts are about $3 each) to the cost of the wood if you bought it from a dealer. If the reclaimed wood + inserts is a fair bit cheaper then go for it, otherwise pass on it.

John

[Tom Adger]

I like the belt sander with coarse grit 1st. Take it outside and get most of it off. Doesn't have to be perfect. Then the jointer. Absolutely use a metal detector. I also use a wire brush on everything before it goes on the jointer to get off any embedded sand, grit, etc.

[Steve Schoene]

Where does all this silliness about the great damage and dulling from planing off a clear finish come from. It isn't at all like paint which include pigment made of ground up metal oxides that can be pretty abrasive. But the clear finish is just a bit harder than most woods, pretty much insures that there is less imbedded grit than with rough lumber from the lumber yard, and makes it a lot easier to see if there is imbedded metal.

Worst case, you have to sharpen blades a very little faster than usual. So what--that's not abuse it's use, and the cost to sharpen can just be figured into the price of the lumber--adding a few pennies a board foot to the cost of the lumber. Running it through a planer is by far the fastest, easiest method of turning the material into something usable.

I would NEVER want to plane after using a sander. Sanding leaves really hard grit in the wood--aluminum oxide etc. That's a bad idea.

[Eiji Fuller]

Yes, No fuss at all. Just run it man No worries. Make sure no metal is in there though. What the heck is a little finish going to do to the byrd inserts. Nuttin.

[Glenn Vaughn]

Where does all this silliness about the great damage and dulling from planing off a clear finish come from. It isn't at all like paint which include pigment made of ground up metal oxides that can be pretty abrasive. But the clear finish is just a bit harder than most woods, pretty much insures that there is less imbedded grit than with rough lumber from the lumber yard, and makes it a lot easier to see if there is imbedded metal.

Just because a finish is clear does not mean it does not contain oxides. Floor finishes are a case in point; We have put down bamboo flooring that is prefinished. We used some of the flooring for counter tops in the laundry room. For some silly reason we decided to sand the finish off of one counter top so we could apply a different look (and finish). It turns out the bamboo has 9 coats of clear aluminum oxide finish. All we were able to do with a belt sander was eat a bunch of belts - you could not tell we had been sanding at all.

Another finish I hate is milk paint. We had purchased a 100 yer old victorian some years ago that needed to be repainted. The bevel siding was pretty bad and needed to be stripped before painting. Strippers would not take the finish off. Sanding was futile. Purchased a Makita power hand planed - all it did was eat blades. After 6 months of trying to stip the wood we ended up replacing all of the siding.

[Neal Clayton]

another ad for milk paint ^ ;)

if you ever run into that again, fwiw, you could've simply hired someone to come out and buff the dirt off and recoated the milk paint. can't get lead paint anymore but milk paint is still available from a few places.

[Steve Schoene]

The iron oxides in factory finished wood flooring is a relatively recent phenomena, hardly what you would expect from materials old enough to be reclaimed.