Surfacing Figured Lumber

[Chris Lee]

Does anybody have any secrets for thicknessing figured lumber? I don't have the cash to get a drum sander but it is on the horizon? Any way to plane this stuff without all the tearout? I was planing some curly maple and taking very light cuts and still had some bad tearout?Any suggestions?Chris

[Donnie Raines]

Hi Chris,

See if this link will help you. I have not read it for some time....so I don't recall all of the content. The best strick is wetting down the face with water and allowing that to soak in. Then skew the angle of the board as you feed it through the planer.

http://www.curlymaple.com/working.shtml

[Martin Shupe]

Chris,

Find a cabinet shop with a timesaver or other large sander. Most will sand your lumber to thickness for a reasonable fee. Worth it, IMHO.

[lou sansone]

I agree with all of the above suggestions, they have been helpful to me. I agree with you that if you are going to do a lot of work with figured wood that sanders really do help the process. I ended up with a timesavers and it really has been great IMHO
lou

[Dave Anderson NH]

Donney has the right idea, but if you don't want your planer knives to rust substitute mineral spirits for the water. Remember to make very light cuts ofr your final passes. You still will probably need to clean things up and do the final work with a finely set and tight mouthed hand plane or a scraper.

[Michael Stafford]

My favorite way to surface figured wood short of planing or using a drum sander is to plane it with a router planing jig. This is a method that allows you to smooth and thickness small pieces of lumber no matter the grain orientation. It is a matter of patience more than anything else as it can be very slow if you are trying to surface a large piece of wood.

Basically, the setup is two parallel boards of absolutely equal width attached to a flat plane ( workbench top, MDF, flat plywood etc.). Between these two pieces of wood you slide a router attached to an extended router base of sufficient width and strength that you can route the surface of the board attached to the flat plane with a dado planer bit or other wide bit. Some people use a wide bowl bit. You adjust your bit so that you nibble the board away until you have a flat and smooth side. Then you flip the board and rout it until it is smooth and parallel to the first side.

This technique works effectively with all woods and grain orientations. May require some random orbit sanding after but does a nice job. This is an old method but was recently pictured in the April issue of Wood or somewhere in that neighborhood. I saw it described in a router handbook several years ago and used it until I was able to get a portable planer. I still use it for highly figured woods susceptible to chip out.

I hope this helps.

[George M. Perzel]

Hi
See issue 162 of WOOD- April/May 2005. Cover has great article on using router to do what you want. Good Luck
George