hand plane question

[Curtis Niedermier]

Recently I put together my first door panel frame made entirely with hand tools. The stiles and rails were mortised and tenoned by hand, lumber dimensioned by hand, etc.

When It was all put together, all the edges lined up just about perfect and were easy to flush up with a hand plane. But on the face, a couple of the pieces sat a little proud of the pieces mating against them. I quickly figured out that I could never plane with the grain the entire time. I had to plane across the grain for one piece and with it for the other. This caused some tearout on the piece that was being planed across the grain. I tried going at an angle. I tried rotating the plane around the corner. I ended up taking extremely light cuts and trying to stop just shy of the joint, then coming back with a scraper to clean up.

Is there a trick out there for handling this type of situation? I've run into the same thing when planing the top of a dovetailed box case, but I was able to sort of steer the plane around the corner and avoid any tearout.

[Andrew Hughes]

I think those small inconsistency can really make a piece appealing,esp when it's unintentional.Unless you want to grind it down smooth with rocks glued to sandpaper. I say leave it.And welcome to the creek.Andrew

[Chris Friesen]

All the usual rules for reducing tearout apply. Sharp blade, high cutting angle or chipbreaker very close to the edge, tight mouth, skew the blade, light cut, etc. And sometimes you still need to scrape or sand.

[mike holden]

"Is there a trick out there for handling this type of situation?"
Yes, one is to deliberately make the stiles a slight bit proud of the rails, then plane them down when assembled. (if you make the rails proud, then you hit the cross grain of the stiles)
I am sure there are others, but this is simple and works for me.
Mike