8/4 hard maple shoots woodworker

[Marko Milisavljevic]

I shot 4/4 hard maple before, and while it is not quite pleasurable, it is not a terrible job with a sharp blade. I am using LV LA Jack with A2 blade at 25 deg. It is sharp enough to shave my arm bare and flies through hard maple when used with grain.

With 8/4 stock I can't make much end grain progress. As soon as I ask the blade to bite more than about an inch, it refuses and either bounces off or hits the literal maple wall. Is it me or is it it?

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I've had a bit of trouble trying to smooth up large areas of end grain like that. Wetting the grain with spirits or alchohol only helps so much, but can still be a great advantage in some woods. Skewing the cut is going to be your best bet, in my opinion, but that can prove difficult with a piece that thick and a shooting board. Taking the smallest possible cut is also going to a *huge* help.

My first instince though is what you're doing that needs perfectly square edge this large? Can you get by with just "square enough" and smooth? Working without the shooting board might make things easier then. Is it to be a joinery-type surface where undercutting with a chisel might make getting the show edges better looking easier? The last time I had to work a large area of end grain like this, doing it by eye was much easier as it allowed me to worke the plane in the directions that the wood wanted to be worked, and to skew the plane as was beneficial. Because it was a long piece, I actually layed the work across my sawhorses and planed downwards.

Of course, the better you get your sawn surface, the easier it's going to be to clean up. If your cut is fairly off, it may be better to cut off a little more and start again - with this much end grain it's going to be easier to smooth out a cut to show surface than to square up something far off from desired.

[Andrew Gibson]

a heavier plane would also help :)

Might be a good time to get a LN #51

See I am no help at all

[David Weaver]

Mark it (all the way around), take it off the shoot board, put it in a vise (perhaps with a backing piece if spelching is a concern) and plane it.

There's no great reason to shoot it unless it's a little stick that's too small to plane to a marking line.

[Jim Matthews]

+1 on gauging, and working my way around.

I think you'll make better progress with a block plane setting chamfers on four sides, with your larger plane in at the last.

There will be a natural direction the endgrain wants to slice, and an opposing direction where everything splits out.
I think something this large might be better handled with a paring, rather than shooting stroke.

[Tony Shea]

Mark it (all the way around), take it off the shoot board, put it in a vise (perhaps with a backing piece if spelching is a concern) and plane it.

There's no great reason to shoot it unless it's a little stick that's too small to plane to a marking line.

Exactly what David said. Hitting such a large area straight on with a blade is not usually good practise especially with real hard woods. If you were attacking the peice at a pretty good angle then you may be able to acheive acceptable results. A ramped shooting board or a skewed iron shooting plane. Even then I think this would be somewhat difficult. Square a line around the stock and plane to the line in your vise. Oh and this line should def be knifed in.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Thanks for great advice on how to approach this task. I am building a Moxon vise, so of course ends of jaws don't have to be dressed in any way - I just felt like trying. I can get it pretty close with careful sawing and chiseling, but the final stretch, where everything is within 1/64" or so, but is showing tool marks and needs to be smoothed out seems still out of reach. Plane is just too hard to use at that point, because to get any work done it has to take a wide bite. What would cabinetmakers of old do if they wanted a perfect product at this point, and sandpaper hasn't been invented yet? Just don't use 8/4 hard maple exposed end grain? Or perhaps they weren't obsessed with making it perfect...

[Jim Matthews]

I made my Moxxon with the front and back faces made from the same board. That way, the seasonal changes in shape are the same (or close).
I cut close to my marked dimension, then put a chamfer on the ends. Start with the "short" section, then chamfer the wider face edges.

It's a tool - it's going to get rough treatment. How much fit and finish you put into it is a matter of preference (and diminishing returns).

I think you can approach a perfect finish with Hard Maple which has a Janka rating around 1150, using a skewing or slicing motion on the end grain.
I have dressed the endgrain of Ipe and Angelim Pedra, which are both MUCH harder. I suspect your handplane may not be ideally set up, and end grain is a test of plane fettling.

Have you tried to do this with a wide, flat chisel (http://www.instructables.com/id/Wood-Chiseling/step7/End-grain-paring/)? It might be easier to get a smooth finish, that way.

228787

[Russell Sansom]

I don't mean to go against the grain here, but I've had the cases that called for a "shot" 4/2 end in hard stuff. For example, fitting a wrest plank into a harpsichord. The wrest plank is the large chunk of wood near the keyboard that holds the tuning pins. I can easily think of ways to avoid shooting it, but the point is I've done it. It's a given that the end has to be carefully circumscribed with clean knife cuts. I generally don't count on the shooting board to give the same perfection I can get from good draftsmanship using a knife. It can also be done free hand with a jointer as if it were a block plane and it works considerably more smoothly than a block plane.


Here's what I'd say: It's rather fiddly but it can be done. From an engineer's point of view it's a matter of getting a good impedance match and that means 1) lots of mass and 2) lots of sharp.
I wouldn't try it with something less massive than a #7 jointer or my trusty Bedrock #8. I found that the iron had to be "just right" sharp and it needed a touch more than the customary very mild camber that I keep on the original carbon steel iron. I took the time to find this sharp / camber combination at a time when I was spending 12 hours a day in the shop. I think this would be more difficult on an A-2 iron just because it isn't so easy to experiment with different angles and especially different cambers on that steel.
I'm not suggesting this is quick and easy. It sprang from the fact that the bedrock #8 was basically my only plane and I didn't know any better. But once I found the set up, it was something I did regularly and I still do today.
Having said all that, as much as I dislike firing up the table saw, this happens to be one of the things at which it excels.

[David Keller NC]

Marko - Here's a slightly different thought. If the fence on your shooting board is not absolutely square to the running edge (the plane track), then it's possible that the thickness of the shavign that the plane is being asked to take is very thin at the first part of the stroke, but is getting progressively thicker towards the other side of the board. That's pretty much a guarantee for stalling the plane out or forcing the blade out of the cut.

To test this, simply flip the board over. If the above supposition is correct (the end to be shot isn't perfectly square to the running track of the plane), then you will experience the opposite problem - the plane won't cut and/or will bounce off at the beginning of the cut, rather than mid-way through.