Help needed with some planing issues with Ash

[Jay Radke]

hi all. i have been lurking here for awhile learning your ways. this June I was able to spend some time with Jeff Miller building a Roubo bench. I waited out the warm summer months to get to the cool ones to start on flattening the top. the flattening process went well. however i encountered issues with a few of the boards when trying to do my last planning with a #4 smoother. there were a few boards that had some tear out in the middle of the boards. nearly all the boards came out nice a clean but a few were really bad in spots. i dont think its because the blade was sharp as these issues were mixed in between good and bad runs. i had sharpened my PMV11 prior to starting in. i should have taken some pics to post here to show what i am talking about and will when i get home tonight.

one thing that i did notice was the boards that planed the best had nice tight straight grain, while the ones that had issues seemed to have more open and "wavy" grain.

if anyone has suggestions i would love to hear them. since this is a workbench after all i might not go back and try to plane any more material off.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Might help:

1. setting the chepbreaker close enough - this truly works

2. higher cotting angle (back bevel might work but I don't like them)

3. super tight mouth

If it's not very deep I wouldn't put too much time into it.

[Jay Radke]

i will try closing the mouth even more and take one last swipe at it, but over all i was getting very thin shavings. the blade i am using has a 35 degree microbevel but no back bevel. but is it something about these few boards that is causing the problem as it doesnt happen with the majority of the boards.

i might take one more pass with the mouth as close as i can get it but after that that will be it. it is a workbench after all and i am sure as soon as i put it to full use it will get dinged in other spots. this is my first time really hand planing so i was trying to get it as smooth as possible for practice sense.

[Steve Voigt]

Personally, I wouldn't touch my workbench with a #4. A flat top with some tearout is infinitely more useful than a perfectly smooth top with the slight undulations that a small smoother (like a #4) will give you. I would do my final surfacing with a #6, #7, or #8.
If you are using a Stanley/Bailey pattern plane with a 45* bed angle, closing the mouth is not as effective a strategy as setting the chipbreaker close. I recommend you go back and read the many threads over the past year or two about chipbreakers. As Mathew says above, it really does work.

[Prashun Patel]

Ash - like many woods - can be prone to tear out. You can improve your chances for success by paying attention to grain direction. This is not always apparent visually. To find out the grain direction, I use a block plane and take a couple light, test passes. It will feel smooth in one direction, and may catch in the opposite direction. You have to do this the whole length of the board to identify areas where the grain direction switches. IMHO, though, switchy grain is not a big issue with ash.

On a workbench top, it's easy to glue a board or two in the wrong direction. This is problematic because the neighboring 'proper direction' boards will make the plane travel smoother and faster than if the offending board were planed in isolation. You can end up with tearout without even feeling it. The solution for me is to plane across grain at 45 degrees, with very light passes.

In the end, I agree with the comment about flat trumping tearout-free. You can do more damage to flatness trying to remedy deep tear-out.

[Tom Vanzant]

Prashun, I added about 6" in width to a very narrow bench, being very careful with grain direction. When I mounted the new slab, I must have had head up and locked because the grain was opposite to the existing top. I flattened with cross-planing and smoothed with many VERY thin diagonal passes. Of course new maple and old oiled beech looked strange for a couple of years...

[David Weaver]

I don't normally like to promote anything, but I wrote an article about setting a cap iron last year, and it was professionally edited and pictures were added for me (if you google cap iron and my name, you'll find it). You might want to read it. No tight mouth (counterproductive when setting the cap iron tight) and no steep angle or expensive planes needed. There won't be anything on ash short of rotten wood that you can't tolerate, and though in a previous life I said the same thing as above - test plane boards and make sure they all run the same direction, when you set the cap iron properly, that's not necessary.

There is light tearout in the article, but the pictures are not mine and the editor felt it important to show that tearout reduction is also an improvement. There is no such tearout in anything I've planed in the last year and a half with a cheap common bench plane.

There will be more cap iron articles in magazines at some point (there have been some in the works for a while), but I'd imagine none will be better because magazine editors won't allow someone to write an article as boring (boring, but prescriptive) and long as mine. The editor allowed me freedom to make it long and boring, which is one of the reasons I didn't submit an article to any magazines though I had the opportunity to (well, along with my belief that articles should be written by professionals if at all possible, and I'm not a woodworking professional - I value the forum community and interaction/discussion/evolving debate more).

[Jay Radke]

where can i find said article

[Jim Koepke]

where can i find said article

The terms of service here at SMC prevent posting a direct link.



(if you google cap iron and my name, you'll find it).


Follow David's instructions and you will find the article.

jtk

[Jay Radke]

thanks found the article. nice piece and it probably is my issue. i thought i had it pretty close but it probably looks more like the first picture of the cap iron setting. my tear looks similar to the one shown in the article.

thanks for the help everyone. it was a good learning experience.

[Winton Applegate]

Here is a totally not pro edited epic that I wrote on tearout and flattening.


Lets call it another perspective (http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine-woodworking-knots/general-discussion/handplaning-qs-white-oak).

This article should clear things up nicely. This is a very important "basic principles of wood working " article.
http://www.finewoodworking.com/SkillsAnd... (http://www.finewoodworking.com/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesPDF.aspx?id=2091)


If all else fails
http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine-woodworking-knots/general-discussion/wetting-wood-prone-tearout (http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine-woodworking-knots/general-discussion/wetting-wood-prone-tearout)