Hand-hewn texture?

[Jamie Buxton]

Old timbers sometimes have a scalloped surface left from an axe or an adze. Festool has a special set of knives for their hand-held planer that is intended to make that kind of surface. Rather than having a straight cutting edges, the knive cutting edge is curved -- kinda like the iron in a smoothing plane. The Festool planer plus the optional knives cost $600 or so. Has anybody tried a less-expensive version -- regrinding the knives in a Dewalt or the like?

[Tom Scott]

What are you trying to do this on? Big beams, smaller boards or a table top? And how much surface are you trying to apply this treatment to? Are you looking for something that more closely replicates a hewn beam or just something that gives the hint of it but still has a smoother finish (like the "hand hewn" wood floors)?
There's always the option of an old Stanley #4 or #5 with a radiused blade. Unless you have hundreds of board feet to do, this is quick, easy and only costs about $25 dollars (if you don't already have one). And, no sanding is required. There are also small adzes that will be a lot more difficult to get consistent results, but will look more authentic.
Can't help you with powered options.

[Jim Matthews]

+1 on a sharp adze and ten (http://www.cleftoak.co.uk/thumbs.html)minutes.

Simulating this seems dodgy, to me.
It's like making new furniture appear old or "distressed".

Why not just perform the task by hand, as the finishing step?

[Peter Quinn]

I've used a makita hand held planer with the knives ground to a radius to simulate a handscraped look, and I've used the festool both with the stock knives and custom ground. Both leave tell tale machine lines that to my eye are less than convincing and must subsequently be removed. They are expeditious where a lot of volume is involved. The final result is not that of a hand hewn beam but more like that of a scrub plane with radiused iron. It's my understanding that the notches on the beams were to act as plaster keys, and I've actually stripped old beams that were plastered in just that manner. I can't imagine you getting that look without actually doing at least some of the work by hand. A power planer might handle the rough in though.

[Jamie Buxton]

+1 on a sharp adze and ten (http://www.cleftoak.co.uk/thumbs.html)minutes.

Simulating this seems dodgy, to me.
It's like making new furniture appear old or "distressed".

Why not just perform the task by hand, as the finishing step?

Have you actually done this with an adze? It seems to me to require very good eye-hand coordination. You're trying to swing the adze to just make a skimming cut. Too deep, and the adze just sticks into the wood partway through the cut. But you don't seem to have any references to get your elbow exactly the correct distance from the board.

[Frank Drew]

Jamie,

You might try a wide, shallow carving gouge to get a similar effect, something like a 2" #3 sweep.

[Kevin Bourque]

Wouldn't the Festool leave machining marks that need top be sanded out? A broad adz or hatchet is what the old timers used.

[Eric DeSilva]

Festool has a special set of knives for their hand-held planer that is intended to make that kind of surface.

I don't get this... Most hand-adzed surfaces I've seen haven't been regular, they have been very irregular. A planer with a special knife is going to just run a groove down the face of your wood. To mimic the deepening--then shallowing--cut of an adze, you would need to plunge the planer a tiny bit then lift as you are moving it forward, right? That would then net you a single fake adze cut? Seems like an awful lot of work and like the system might be prone to lots of errors--running a cut fully plunged too long and getting a machined look, unevenness as you plunge down...

Is there a way a CNC could do this? If you had a swivel head on wide cutting head so that it that could be positioned, then arced, then moved to a new position... Or even held at a fixed diagonal (or you used a ball cutter) and swept through the arc to mimic the path of an adze?

[Eric DeSilva]

I found a video by a guy with the handle "Kreg" on the Festool Owners Group forum showing how the process is done. What he ends up with may be "rustic," but it does not resemble the fine precision hand-adzed work I've seen. By any stretch of the imagination.

In searching for a good picture, I ran across this site, which I will promptly bookmark for future reference. Texture 11 is what I think of as the hand adzed look, which is not what you get with a Festool planer. This, I think, is exactly what I was talking about--CNC'd adzed textures: http://www.barkermanufacturing.com/TEXTURES_AVAILABLE.html

[David Posey]

Just tried it with a hand adze. It requires about the same hand-eye coordination as using a hammer. I don't think you'd want to try to get a finished surface with the large adze intended to be used while standing, although obviously that could be done if that was your method of sizing the beam. I'd imagine if you are sizing the piece beforehand you'd want to leave about an 1/8" on every side to allow for your depth of cut with the adze.

As Jim said, it is very important that the adze be sharp. I had to sharpen my recently found one before I could get a good result.

[Greg R Bradley]

I have the Festool with the accessory blade. The combination of a VERY smooth planer and a VERY smooth and accurate depth adjuster that can be rotated precisely while you are planing is what gives you the very convincing finish. It doesn't take long to learn how to move the planer at a steady speed while you increase the depth and then decrease it. You do have to make sure not to stop at a certain depth or you would create a groove like a normal planer with a curved blade. That is what the other two rustic blades for the planer do.

If you have done it, you will understand that no other planer could be made to do this, not even the smaller Festool one.

The big project is done and I have extra planers and a stack of extra rustic heads if you are interested. Going to list them in classifieds soon.

[Frank Drew]

Interesting; thanks for the explanation, Greg.

[Larry Fox]

I would look to the scrub plane first.

[Bruce Wrenn]

[QUOTE=Larry Fox;1968229]I would look to the scrub plane first. We have a WINNER!

[Larry Edgerton]

Have you actually done this with an adze? .

Jamie, using an adz is not all that difficult, much easier than it seems before you try it. The adz has a compound curve, and you use that curve to control your cut. For skim cutting you cut closer to you so that the angle of attack is less, and cut farther out for deeper cuts. Its easy to master, and you can practice on a log.

Besides, Its fun....

Larry

[Jamie Buxton]

Eric Disilva's link has pics somewhat like the texture I have in mind. Okay, those are more structured than I'm thinking, but the idea is there: scallops in the surface of the wood, well-enough cut that they are the finished surface. A scrub plane would make long troughs in the surface, and isn't what I have in mind.

[Jamie Buxton]

Jamie, using an adz is not all that difficult, much easier than it seems before you try it. The adz has a compound curve, and you use that curve to control your cut. For skim cutting you cut closer to you so that the angle of attack is less, and cut farther out for deeper cuts. Its easy to master, and you can practice on a log.

Besides, Its fun....

Larry

Larry, have you actually done this kind of surfacing with an adze?

Here's how I'm visualizing it... I'm holding the adze by its handle. As I swing it, it and my forearm are pivoting on my elbow. If I move my elbow a sixteenth inch closer to the surface, the scallop I take out of the surface is a sixteenth of an inch deeper. This seems to me to be a problem. I think the scallops should be roughly the same size, so movement of my elbow more than a few sixteenths would be bad. I don't think I can control my elbow position that precisely. For comparison, if I hammer a nail, which is the same motion, sometimes I hit the nail exactly on the head, but often I hit it a little off center.

[Greg R Bradley]

I'm assuming that you are after the Adze textures shown in the Barker Manufacturing samples, particularly #11, 21, 31, 41. Any plane with a fixed blade is going to give you grooves, not adze scallop shaped "divots". I'm not knowledgeable about a scrub plane but assume that has to do the same. Any electric plane would do the same even if you could figure out a way to curve the blade. Actually the Festool HL850 with the adze style head would do that also if you didn't rotate the depth adjust as you worked.

What makes the HL850 unique is that it has a calibrated depth adjuster that you can easily adjust as you work. You can simply rotate the front handle and plunge 3.5mm down and then roll it back to zero. This lets you create the scallop shaped "divits" that look like adze marks. They also have fine and coarse grooved style heads. In each case the head is a massive chunk of aluminum with the correct shape so the blade is well supported and won't chatter.

In addition you have to realize that the typical electric planer is pretty crude, similar to a $20 hand plane sold by the BORG that you didn't sharpen or adjust. These are just barely useful for most uses and require a bunch of skil to function at all. The Festool planers are a completely different class of machine. They are heavy, stable, smooth, and don't chatter. The bigger one is more specialized and adds the extra head capabilities.

Here is a pic of the three rustic heads and the patterns that they leave:
239161

[Jamie Buxton]

I'm assuming that you are after the Adze textures shown in the Barker Manufacturing samples, particularly #11, 21, 31, 41. Any plane with a fixed blade is going to give you grooves, not adze scallop shaped "divots". I'm not knowledgeable about a scrub plane but assume that has to do the same. Any electric plane would do the same even if you could figure out a way to curve the blade. Actually the Festool HL850 with the adze style head would do that also if you didn't rotate the depth adjust as you worked.

What makes the HL850 unique is that it has a calibrated depth adjuster that you can easily adjust as you work. You can simply rotate the front handle and plunge 3.5mm down and then roll it back to zero. This lets you create the scallop shaped "divits" that look like adze marks. They also have fine and coarse grooved style heads. In each case the head is a massive chunk of aluminum with the correct shape so the blade is well supported and won't chatter.

In addition you have to realize that the typical electric planer is pretty crude, similar to a $20 hand plane sold by the BORG that you didn't sharpen or adjust. These are just barely useful for most uses and require a bunch of skil to function at all. The Festool planers are a completely different class of machine. They are heavy, stable, smooth, and don't chatter. The bigger one is more specialized and adds the extra head capabilities.

Here is a pic of the three rustic heads and the patterns that they leave:
239161

Yeah, that surface at the rear of the pic is what I've been thinking about.
Your comments about why the usual cheap planer can't do that make sense to me.

[Jim Matthews]

Here's a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoTBHactmLE&feature=related) suggesting the method - machine prep, adze finishing.

She's cute, too.

Not so cute is Peter Follansbee on choosing a hatchet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyT87p16m1g).
He demonstrates the position for cutting with a shorter stroke.

If the project is large, I would want to do it with a longer handle.

I

[Dave Carteret]

+1 on a sharp adze and ten (http://www.cleftoak.co.uk/thumbs.html)minutes.

Simulating this seems dodgy, to me.
It's like making new furniture appear old or "distressed".

Why not just perform the task by hand, as the finishing step?

I have to agree. If you want the look of something that's hand hewn, then do it by hand.

Built some kitchen cabinets for a friend. They wanted a knotty pine, hand hewn look. Well, the "rustic cabinet" shop they were looking at would take a smooth, round-faced rail/stile and make it look hewn by running a handheld electric planer over it. With only a little more work, I could actually take a rough board and plane it down to the right size & shape, leaving REAL planer marks in it.