quatersawn beech - steamed or no steamed

[Matthew N. Masail]

I just finished a small quatersawn beech trimming plane. man this wood is beautiful, makes me want to make a whole set out of it, and it would be perfect for traditional planes if I get to that. so before I go and buy a slab, do you have any advice on what I should look for?

BTW, you can tell by the screw positions I wasn't paying attention . . . bad on me, I need to have more patience.

[David Keller NC]

Steamed Beech is usually European Beech that has been steamed to remove the sap, then kiln-dried. The quarter-sawn variety available on a somewhat spotty basis from lumber suppliers. I paid about $6/ b.f. for about 150 b.f. in NC.

Domestic beech could, in theory, also be steamed. But domestic beech tends to be tough to find, particularly in the quarter-sawn form, and is usually only available from tiny micro-mills or hobby sawyers. As such, it's usually air-dried with no steaming.

I have some of the domestic variety as well that I had a custom sawyer cut from a Beech log. It tends to move significantly while air-drying, but if you get it cut up in suitable sizes (in my case, 16/4), then the wood movement isn't a big deal since you don't need very big billets to make planes.

As far as I can tell, the working properties of European Fagus sylvatica is about the same as domestic Fagus grandifolia.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Thanks! There is a lumber yard that carries a hugh supply of beech, steamed and not, so I was just wondering what I should go for, is steamed more stable?

[Shawn Pixley]

I have used european steamed beech (QS) and found it very stable. I works extremely well too IMO.

[David Weaver]

Thanks! There is a lumber yard that carries a hugh supply of beech, steamed and not, so I was just wondering what I should go for, is steamed more stable?

Steamed if European, not steamed if American.

[george wilson]

Beech is just about the LEAST stable wood I have ever had. We cut 5000 bd. ft. of it for the tool making program. 6 or 7 years later,of air drying in a hot(in the summer) attic,and the blasted stuff was still murder to make a long cooper's jointer from.

It was used because it grows like weeds and was cheap. They used it on cheap 19th.C.,and early 20th.C. English furniture. I've had doweled together copies of Queen Anne chairs made from it (I sold them). I picked them and others up at a local auction in the 70's,when English furniture,even the good stuff,was quite cheap. That has changed now,but when they just started bringing it in in quantity,you could get a set of 6 100 year old Queen Anne chairs for $75.00,made of beech,and of decent form. Only,the dowel joints fell apart. I think they robbed every old hotel in England of furniture!!! Wash stands could reach to the Moon.

You never saw beech on nicer pieces.

When I make a nice wooden plane in the future,I'm using Northern hard maple. It is harder,more stable,and a lot more durable.

[David Weaver]

When I asked them about beech at hearne, the owner crinkled his nose. He said I could look at upholstered frames if I wanted to find beech (he did mention that europe dumped a whole boat load - literally - of excess beech on a US port in the past and ruined the market all at once for it).

He called it a "utility wood".

[george wilson]

The only current furniture made from beech,or veneered with beech is some Scandinavian furniture whose name I can't recall. I don't care for minimalist looking furniture personally.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I've been working with Yellow birch a lot lately, and enjoying it. I seem to recall that a lot of American planes were made of it, but maybe I'm totally wrong. Anyone have an opinion of birch vs. beech? Birch is easier for me to find. Given Matthew's location, I wonder if there's something better for him to be working with than beech?

[David Weaver]

Birch is fine as long as it's a type of birch that is dense enough. Yellow birch is fine. Birch was used for planes in the US before beech was. I guess a supply of beech was easier to find, but I don't know for sure.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

having recently made a folding book-stand out of the aforementioned yellow birch, I had a feeling it was dense enough. Unfortunately I haven't had luck finding quartersawn *anything* (except oak) at the lumber dealer I usually go to. When I get around to trying my hand at some plane making, I either need to start looking around or do some internet wood-shopping.

[Matthew N. Masail]

I can get Hard Maple.... though I'm not sure if they have it in 10/4 stock. is there any downside to figured maple if it's quatersawn? like flamed or birdseye? asuming I can find 10/4 quatersawn

[Mel Fulks]

Stability of birch is certainly better.Birch seems to me,to be 'under used', the redder heart would is sold as a separate grade and is very pretty.Curiously the grade specs for natural birch say a certain percentage of it can be beech.

[David Weaver]

I can get Hard Maple.... though I'm not sure if they have it in 10/4 stock. is there any downside to figured maple if it's quatersawn? like flamed or birdseye? asuming I can find 10/4 quatersawn

Figured maple is less stable than straight grained maple. But you can still make a plane from it.

If you're working wood with hand tools, you'll find hard maple a little less nice to work and a little more likely to splinter at the mouth than fruitwoods (I don't know if beech is a fruitwood, but it works a lot like fruitwoods.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Figured maple is less stable than straight grained maple. But you can still make a plane from it.

If you're working wood with hand tools, you'll find hard maple a little less nice to work and a little more likely to splinter at the mouth than fruitwoods (I don't know if beech is a fruitwood, but it works a lot like fruitwoods.
.
Yeah, I'm working with only hand tools and a bandsaw, When you say a little less nice, what exactly do you mean? I make the mouth at 80degrees towards the bed, can it still chip? I find beech pretty nice to work with, it just needs sharp tools, I agree it's very creamy like the fruitwoods I've tried but not quite as nice. I can maybe get bubinga, but I think it will be much harder to work no?

[David Weaver]

Yeah, no bubinga. I find maple about twice as hard to work as beech (maybe not quite, but mortising it out by hand is no party), which is substantially harder than cherry. Cherry is OK for moulding planes, but very marginal for bench planes (I put up one I made out of cherry on here sometime earlier this year, but in reality, it would've been a lot nicer if it was a beech plane. Cherry is what I had in wood big enough, so I used it).

Anyway, if you can get big euro beech, and you haven't got access to the skills and tools that george does, I would use the euro beech - it will be easier for you to work.

If you want to make wooden planes, a cordless drill will be fine for starting the mouth, just use it with intuition. You'll want to make yourself an abutment saw or find something suitable as such to minimize how much chisel work and fitting you have to do with abutments. The rest of the stuff you might be inclined to use floats on, you can use chisels generally instead - floats just make fitting a little faster and easier.

By chippy for maple, I mean it is less forgiving around the mouth of a plane when you're building the plane, it might chip here or there. What it does is completely inconsequential to planing with the plane, but it is sort of there for all to see - an ugly cosmetic mistake. Fruitwoods are a lot less demanding in your skill in terms of not accidentally blowing out an opposite side of a cut or rasping back into grain and tearing out a long splinter, etc.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Mmmmm I see.. Thank you so much for the explanation! I remember the cherry smoother you made, I remember that the bottom was not oiled lol I actually think about it almost every day. . . :o since I’ll most likely buy a big plank I think I'll go with beech, it should be cheap enough to learn on. I don't know when I'll attempt my first traditional plane, I really need to find/buy
some educational information about how to do it, I don't like flying in the dark. I know I want to learn how to do this, and do it well. But because I've only been woodworking since February (+1 year with a drill and an orbital sander), and not much free time so I don't want to push too much to fast and get discouraged.
Are floats necessary? I had a thought to make float shaped pieces of brass (I have it and don’t have a use for it) and use PSA sandpaper on them, do you think that would be a good tool?

[Kees Heiden]

You can't go wrong with beech. Billions of planes have been made from beech. It was always plentifull and cheap. Easyish to work. Hard enough to withstand wear too soon. Maybe it moves a bit more then other woods, but when you use it quartered, the many rays in beech at least keep the bed surface shape stable (that's Larry Williams theory).

Steamed beech was the choice of the planemakers of yesteryear. When you find it in quartered form, that's nice. Otherwise use the unsteamed stuff, it is a bit less stable though.

[george wilson]

The large,darkly varnished jointer plane I posted here some time ago was entirely made by hand,and mortised with Ca. 1966 Marples chisels. The varnish was hand made,too! I made it from pine resin(colophony),edible linseed oil,cooked in the presence of iron for the brown color,and thinned with genuine(there's the hard part these days) Turpentine.

[Mel Fulks]

George,the musician James Moore and I visited the shop years ago and you showed us some varnish you made on a violin you made. The varnish wasn't just more varnish ,it was instantly recognizable as special and we still consider it the best we have seen. Any one who hasn't seen a good period varnish will not understand how different it is.

[ian maybury]

Hi Matthew. Here's a decent UK timber merchant's information page on European beech: http://www.john-boddy-timber.ltd.uk/species_beech.htm They have an excellent wood species A-Z information directory.

The big factor i'm aware of with steamed beech is that it takes on a more uniform colour but with a distinctly pink tinge which personally I'm not so keen on.

Beech moves quite a lot with moisture changes - more than maple and the like but it's good stuff in terms of strength and impact resistance.

How hard to work/handle it is seems to depend a lot on the source. You'll see for example that Boddy's offer high quality plantation grown beech from Germany - the key there is that the trees are trimmed and pruned while growing so that they stay straight and don't grow the typical heavy branches. With the result that you don't get knots, wild grain and reaction wood - so it's much like other well behaved hardwoods to work.

Beech is probably the most common naturally occurring hardwood here in Ireland and the UK, but as locally produced it tends to be the natural/wild grown/native variety. The problem with that is that it branches like crazy and leans all over the place. The result tends to be timber that's much more interesting, but one that can often be hard to machine cleanly and is prone to splitting and checking.

I don't have a lot of experience beyond that i'm sitting on a big stack of as yet unmachined nice straight farmed German beech bought for my bench build and can say that it's stayed straight for over a year now. It's used quite widely for commercial furniture here - seemingly without problems provided the design is sound, and the wood is straight, clean and properly conditioned.

It's probably not a good choice to take chances with regarding poor control of moisture content versus the environment it'll be going in to...

ian