Is Soft Wood an All-Around Pain to Work?

[Steve H Graham]

I am learning all sorts of stuff from the shelf I'm making.

I decided to use pine and poplar because they're cheap. I've noticed a few things.

1. This stuff seems to tear out really easily. Is that my imagination? I wanted to make a dado perpendicular to the grain of a board, about 1/4" in from the end, and I realized there was just no way, because the bit would knock the remaining 1/4" completely out of the board. I moved the dado to 5/8" in.

2. Chisels, even when freshly sharpened, will tear soft wood. I've been using chisels to trim around the ends of tongues, and it seems like a lot of the time, the wood will compress and open up between the growth rings before it will cut. This damage will be hidden, but it's aggravating.

3. It seems hard to get two pieces of soft wood to meet at a sharp, clean angle without filler. Every time a tool or a vise or anything touches the corner of a board, it leaves a ding, and by the time you're ready to put things together, you have an inside corner with a lot of little gaps that have to be filled.

4. When you're sawing or even sanding something to adjust it, it's very easy to go too far, because the wood cuts so fast.

5. Router bits that aren't new seem to leave furry edges in soft wood.

I am thinking I should hit this thing with Bondo before I paint it. I am planning on opaque paint because the wood is ugly, so the filler wouldn't show, and it would certainly make the joints look better.

[Kent A Bathurst]

And your point is? :D

You wanna use softwood [or, soft hardwood - poplar], you need to plan your joinery and clamping to accommodate its characteristics.

[Mike Schuch]

All of my shop cabinets are made out of fir and plywood and Bondo before painting is an integral part of the construction. My shop cabinets have been abused for 10+ years now and are still holding strong.

Lots of open grain wood will tear out whether it is a hard wood or a soft wood. Plywood is even worse... MUCH worse with tear out. Learning how to minimize it and how to deal with it is part of wood working. Scoring the stock with a sharp utility knife before cutting the dado will help a lot!

Getting perfect gap-less joints comes from experience and is not limited to soft or hard wood. What kind of joint are you trying to make? For a 45 degree butt joint you need to cut quite accurate 45 degree miters. And even more important than cutting a good 45 when you are making some kind of box or frame is cutting opposing pieces the exact same length. When I make any sort of box / frame I always measure, set my stop block. Push the first piece of stock against the stop block and cut it. Then push my second piece of stock against the stop block and cut it. Making the two pieces as identical in length as I possibly can. I always keep my stop block a little above the surface of the table when I clamp it to the fence so saw dust from the first cut doesn't throw off the second cut.

For 90 degree butt joints I always make things a little over sized then trim the assembly to the proper dimensions.

Post some pictures, maybe we can help you with a few suggestions. I can guarantee you are not the first woodworker to come across these issues!

[Steve H Graham]

I'll see if I can come up with photos, but the basic idea is that soft wood is so easy to dent, deform, and over-cut that you end up with little places where things don't quite meet up.

I can produce a photo of the thing I'm building. It's very simple. Just a box that bolts to the top of a lathe, with a tray on top that extends past the box. Whichever chuck I'm not using goes in the big hole, on a sheet of linoleum tile. I am thinking I'll put some sort of rack for Allen wrenches on the left side under the tray.

It looks a little weird, but the shape was dictated by the desire to avoid having stuff projecting over the spindle and the left headstock cover. I am going to put wood around the top tray to keep stuff from falling off.

I need to find a good brushable opaque enamel. I would use spray cans, but I'm tired of painting my grass. I know people know what I'm talking about!

320253

[Peter Quinn]

I took a hand cut dovetail class with a frequent contributor to FWW a few years back, he had us use pine....not because it was easy to cut, but because it was very difficult to make perfect matching tails and pins in such soft wood, he suggested the pine was great practice wood because it keeps you honest, forces you to hone and advance your technique for better results. You can beat the snot out of maple and it wont dent easily, it may be harder to cut but its much easier to chisel, and sneak up on.

So don't blame the pine. Its guy that holds the tools that is to blame. If you can perfect your technique and finesse in pine, it will improve your results with more machinable bit also vastly more expensive species. On the poplar thing, I find it machines very well, so if that is blowing up on you, not sure what to advise, I cant think of a friendlier species to deal with. Edges are edges, play rough with them and almost anything short of IPE will get marred. I treat my parts like an old stained glass window....very gently. Remember to have fun with it, make mistakes, fix them,learn from them, move on.

[Jim Dwight]

I've made multiple pieces of furniture from softwood that have served us well. I kind of like working with it. It's relatively cheap so if I ruin something I don't get as upset. It also sands well. I like the smell of pine.

I mostly have used butt joints that were glued and screwed. Where the screws would show they get plugged. I cut plugs from a scrap so they generally match fairly well and are not terribly visible. The last project was a couple low cabinets with one shelf each for storage in my wife's office/craft room. My wife asked for pickled pine. I put a rabbet on the uprights but had to have a stopped rabbet on the top and bottom (due to the butt joint). I cut it on the router table but had to finish with a chisel. I was careful but still knocked off the residual 1/4 inch piece a couple times. So I glued it back on. After sanding, not visible. The joints of the vertical pieces to the horizontal area all just glued and screwed butt joints. She likes them. I've had simple pieces like this survive decades of use and multiple moves. I admit they are crude but they work fine.

I get that fuzzy edge sometimes but I just knock it off with a piece of sandpaper. I don't find chiseling to be a big deal but the angle of the chisel to the workpiece is shallower for softwood. I have to use a more slicing motion sometimes depending on the board. I really like the fact that it sands easily. I don't like sanding and the ability to do it quicker is attractive to me. Overall, I like most woods and softwood is no exception. Southern yellow pine is kind of one of my favorites. It's light for it's strength, smells good, and the grain is interesting. I'd rather not have a piece with a lot of resin in it, however. That makes it heavy and harder to work with. But a nice piece of SYP to use a plane or a chisel on is nice.

[Roy Harding]

Working with softwood (or soft hardwoods) is not a "pain" to work with in my opinion - it's just DIFFERENT than working with hardwoods. Others have pointed out some useful techniques, and I won't repeat them. My biggest complaint with pine is the pitch that accumulates on my saw blades. And my biggest concern with softwoods in general (I use a lot of northern red cedar) is how easily it dents and scratches - which is why I have a foam covered (actually hardwood flooring underlayment) panel I place on top of my workbench when I'm working with cedar or pine.

[Robert Engel]

Steve,

Right off I noticed a couple things that will help you. Start out by taking a look at how you are making the cut.

Couple suggestions:

When cutting a dado or rabbet (or any cut across grain) always score a line with a marking knife, no matter what wood you're using, but _especially_ with soft wood. This severs the surface fibers and, if done accurately and deeply enough, practically eliminates the tearout or "fuzzies" you are seeing.

I personally don't like making dado or rabbets with a router bit because the bit is spinning parallel to the face as opposed to a dado blade, which is severing the fibers more perpendicular to the face. But either way, scoring a line makes the diff.

Second, always always always use a sacrificial backer board clamped on the off end to eliminate that chipping out you're experiencing.

I've found keeping a couple chisels sharpened at 20-25 degrees work much better in softwoods. No, they don't hold an edge as long, but it only takes a minute to rehone and the results are worth it, especially working with endgrain. Even with normally ground chisels, they should not do what you're experiencing IF they are honed enough. Not saying you don't know how to sharpen, but from experience I know I have to have much sharper tools when working with softwoods. How far are you taking your honing?

[Steve H Graham]

Thanks for the tips. It's fine with me if you say I don't know how to sharpen.

I am wondering if better chisels would stay sharp longer. Maybe these Home Depot specials are getting dull faster than I realize.

[Susumu Mori]

Hi Steve,

I had exactly the same feeling about pine. In early days, I was using only pine because it was inexpensive.
Some pines are very soft and some are heavy and hard. If you happen to pick up soft & light pine, you may find that chisels cut while smooshing the surface a bit. I didn't like it either, but as I said the softness of pine seems to vary a lot. I recently found many pine boards in HomeDepot from New Zealand, which were fantastic. I also found poplar usually takes hand tools very well; soft enough to cut easily but hard enough to keep very crisp lines, but it may also vary depending on the boards.

So, let's keep our chisels sharp and find better and harder softwood!

[Prashun Patel]

Freshly sharpened chisels don't tear for me. They may compress the wood marginally, but I have no issue getting poplar to work well. In fact, I find it's almost the best of both worlds: Soft enough to cut and chop, but hard enough to pare and plane well.

I humbly suggest yr issue is proper sharpening.

Next, regarding the bit blowing out the ends off a stopped dado, that can be mitigated by clamping backers near the ends. That's a good practice even if you're routing hard woods, and definitely good to do for through dados.

I do notice fuzzies with upcut bits in poplar and softwood plywood. You can try is using a downcutting spiral bit. I think the spirals do an all around better job than the straight flute dado bits. Downcuts are fine for me in a dado where I'm usually not taking a honkingly deep cut, and where there's good relief in the rest of the channel to take the swarf.

I'm having trouble understanding 3, though. If the problem is that manhandling the piece causes the fit to change, that's a risk even with marginally harder woods like walnut and mahogany. So, I'd say (humbly again) try to distribute clamping loads with backer boards, and use backers on your bench if it's harder than your piece.

Regarding 4, I think it's great that poplar cuts so fast and easy. It allows me to focus on control, rather than having to contend with muscle fatigue as well as accuracy. Just me.

[Steve H Graham]

I think people misunderstand the dado thing.

Imagine a dado parallel to the edge of a board, 1/4" from the edge, with the grain perpendicular to the dado. When the dado is cut, there is not much supporting the wood on the outboard side of the dado. I am not having problems with the ends of the dadoes. The router makes nice round ends.

I guess I could fix it by clamping a second piece of wood to the edge of the board while routing, but when it was over, I would still have only 1/4" of soft end grain between the dado and empty space.

[Roy Harding]

I think people misunderstand the dado thing.

Imagine a dado parallel to the edge of a board, 1/4" from the edge, with the grain perpendicular to the dado. When the dado is cut, there is not much supporting the wood on the outboard side of the dado. I am not having problems with the ends of the dadoes. The router makes nice round ends.

I guess I could fix it by clamping a second piece of wood to the edge of the board while routing, but when it was over, I would still have only 1/4" of soft end grain between the dado and empty space.

That's a groove. And the way I'm not following what you're trying to describe. Have you got a quick and dirty diagram you can upload?

[Steve H Graham]

Imagine this, way closer to the edge.

320286

[Roy Harding]

Imagine this, way closer to the edge.

320286

Got it. (In your photo, that IS a dado!!) If you're looking for strength from a small (1/4" you said) piece of lumber, pine isn't your wood of choice. It simply isn't strong enough - the 1/4" chunk will eventually fail. It's actually more to do with the open grained nature of the pine, rather than the fact that it's a softwood. You need a tight grained wood to have anything resembling strength in that 1/4" strip. Of course - it MAY work, depending upon your application - if, for instance, you were using the dado to mount shelves, as long as the 1/4" strip is at the TOP of the assembly you shouldn't have any problems - but the tongue you're inserting would need to be somewhat loose fitting, or you'd blow the wood out along that 1/4" strip.

I'm just popping in and out here, as opportunities present themselves - I'll have a closer look at what you're attempting to do this evening, and perhaps come up with better answers for you.

[Lee Schierer]

If you are not already using one, make and use a zero clearance insert and replace it when you start to notice splintering coming back. You should even use one for your dado blade as it will eliminate most tear out.

Us a dedicated crosscut blade for cross cuts instead of a combination blade. A 60 tooth blade will give you superior cuts that will require little if any sanding.

If your saw isn't tuned up, take the time to do a tune up to align the blade so it is parallel to the miter slot.

[Jim Dwight]

I don't know of any open grained softwoods, pine certainly isn't. Open grained woods are things like oak and ash. I think your point is that the graining in softwoods is distinctive and makes them prone to splitting out along the grain. I agree with that. Oak also does that. Poplar not-so-much.

[Warren Wilson]

You earlier asked for a recommendation for a brushable paint. I have brushed tremclad paint -- the ant-rust product meant for metal surfaces -- onto several boxes that see rough use (to mount gear on my quad that is subjected to a great deal of mud, rain, scratching and scraping). It's an enamel and needs several coats, but it holds up well to hard use.

[Brian Henderson]

Now wait a minute. You're choosing to work with softwood and then you're complaining because it doesn't have the same characteristics as hardwood? Seriously? You need sharp blades to work with most softwoods, but because your blades are not sharp, you're complaining? I'm seeing a problem here but it's not the wood.

[Jerry Olexa]

IMHO, working w pine etc is very EASY but difficult to get some good, craftsman type results..Esp on finishing, staining etc.
Hardwoods much better IMHO