Options for fixing my screw ups

[jeremy romoser]

Thanks for the quick replies but I think this posted twice.
Anyone know how I can delete this thread. It is on the boards twice and the other thread has my complete OP.

[Myk Rian]

It looks like tearout from planing against the grain. A wide belt sander can fix it.

[Kris Cook]

That is a bummer.

The "tearout" could be handled with a common cabinet scraper which you can pick up at a decent hardware store. There is plenty of information out there on how to prep one.

The uneven surfaces can be handled the same way if you don't want to sand it.

The gap is unfortunate, and at this point I can think of a couple of options:

- rip the boards right on the glue line and try again

- rout a groove on the glue line, and inlay a contrasting or complementary wood.

Good luck.

[jeremy romoser]

Attempting to build a 48"x 30" table.
Top is canary boards glued and pocket-holed. The only other table I have built was done the same way and I didn't have these problems.
However, this time the screws didn't draw the boards together as tight as I thought they would.
I now have some gaps but the bigger issue is the uneven joints between some of the boards.

I am not much of a hand tool guy (hell I am still barely a power tool guy) but it seems the only option to fix the uneven boards is to use a hand plane?
I had a home depot 3" block plane that I tried to use and it worked great on one joint but then it started pitting, or whatever its called, the wood. (shown in the pictures)
Luckily I experimented on the bottom side of the table so it won't be seen but now I am worried to try it on the topside. So, are there other options than a hand plane?
The mismatches are about 1/32 to 1/16.
If the hand plane is the solution, then how do I prevent the problems as shown in pictures? After watching some videos, my guess is the plane is not adjusted correctly but don't know for sure.
Also, if I have to get into the hand tool market, which hand plane do I need to fix this table? Various videos seem to suggest a #5 jack plane is the best first one. The Lie-Nielsen website suggests a 60 1/2 adjustable mouth block plane as one of the firsts.
For the power tool furniture builders, do you often have a need for hand planes? I can't justify spending $150-300 on a tool that I may not use again. But definitely want to buy something that won't contribute to the pitting and ruin the table top. Also don't mind if it is a tool that I may use from time to time. FWIW, I do not have a jointer or planer yet but probably will get each sometime this year.
Also, are Lie-Nielsen planes the only American made planes?

One last question, if I had a domino and installed several dominoes between each board would that prevent the gaps and unevenness?

Thanks to all who digest all this and spit out some thoughts and suggestions. It is appreciated.

[Jay Aubuchon]

I would do as Kris suggests: rip right on the glue line and start over. Get the edges as straight as possible, so that when you hold the boards together, there are no gaps. How best to do this depends on what toools you have or can access. Jointer? Table saw? Track saw? Circular saw or router and a good straight edge to use as a guide?

To keep the faces in line while the glue sets, I would use cauls. You can find many threads here regarding their use.

[Martin Siebert]

What you are calling "pitting" is probably tear out. There are a couple things to try with a hand plane. First, hand planes work best if they are extremely very sharp. Second, you can help minimize tear out by setting the blade to only take a minimal cut. Third, try going the other way on the board. If you go left to right and get tear out, then switch up and go right to left.
You have the option of sanding your table too. Sometimes this is necessary because some types of wood or some woods with certain "figure" wont stop tearing out no matter what you do. There are just no guarantees that in wood working you can always do it the fast way. Sometimes you have to buckle down and go slow. Lie Nielson has a 90 degree scraper blade to go in one of their planes.
As far as use of a hand plane, yes, I believe most woodworkers will readily tell you that they use a hand plane quite a bit. If you had a high quality nice hand plane that is sharpened correctly I bet you would also use it a lot. This is not to say that your Home Depot plane if sharpened and set correctly wont do the job...it definitely will.
As far as dominos or biscuits "eliminating" the problem...I wouldn't buy a plate jointer counting on it. I build a lot of tables and caul boards help, but even they won't let me sell my planes and sanders. Even tongue and groove joinery needs to be sanded and/or planed. One thing I find necessary with big table tops is to sand with a long flat board so it gets flat. If you don't then you will look across it and see ripples and areas where it is uneven. Hope this helps and best of luck!!!!

[Bill Dufour]

Never heard of canary wood before. looked it up and it can be several unrelated trees.. So what is yours, where did you get it. I am guessing eucalyptus from Australasia or magnolia from a local sawyer?
Bill D.

[jeremy romoser]

Never heard of canary wood before. looked it up and it can be several unrelated trees.. So what is yours, where did you get it. I am guessing eucalyptus from Australasia or magnolia from a local sawyer?
Bill D.
I hadn't heard of it before either. I am not sure what it is. Although, I know it isn't eucalyptus because I bought a piece of 4/4 eucalyptus the same time I bought the canary wood.
My daughter picked both woods from some pictures on the internet and Houston Hardwoods on the NW side of Houston had them. HH surfaced the wood for me when I bought it and once we got it home and laid it out, we both liked the canary wood better than what we thought based on the pictures.

[jeremy romoser]

Martin--
Thank you. Very helpful response.
Based on your response about sanding and a couple other suggestions (on the second accidental posting of the same thread) to sand it, I think I'll buy a belt sander and give it a go before I
dive into the hand plane world.

[Stan Calow]

A couple of questions. Did you joint the edges of the boards before joining them? Are the boards flat before you put them together? Were the boards trimmed on the table saw before joining? Do you have a ROS or belt sander?

Yes, I always need hand tools to make adjustments even if power tools do the majority of the work. No power tool is 100% accurate. I believe Veritas planes from Lee Valley are made in US or Canada. For smoothing out wide surfaces and uneven joints on table tops, I use a jointer plane (#7 or 8) but I don't know if thats what you're supposed to use. With smaller planes, you can create low spots, IME. I've used canary wood for frames and small boxes. Nothing unusual about it as far as being temperamental or hard to work with.

[glenn bradley]

As a woodworker who uses hand and power tools I will offer that a well tuned, quality hand plane is a wonderful thing and anything short of that is a nightmare that breeds hatred of hand planes :). Hand planes are not alone in this category. There are several tools that will not "almost" work to any degree of satisfaction. A wonky jointer is a boat anchor, a crooked square . . . well, isn't.

Since no one offered up the jointer as the tool for the job I will assume you do not have one or have access to one. A well tuned tablesaw with a good rip blade will leave an edge rivaling a jointer. I will urge caution on the belt sander though. In inexperienced hands, a belt sander can do more damage faster than you can blink. Practice on some scrap and be sure you are getting the result you are after before you take after your canary wood.

[Jim Becker]

Definitely tear-out in an area where grain changes direction. If that hasn't been glued up and you have enough material to add to the panel, rip off those edges. Otherwise, you have a bit of work ahead of you with a very sharp, well tuned hand-plane to reduce thickness down below the issue.

[Robert Engel]

Jeremy,

What you're looking at is tear out. That is caused by several factors such as planing against the grain, or trying to plain grain that is wild, for example, swirling grain near a knot, or highly figured wood where the grain is undulating and has no pattern. Or quite simply, a dull iron and/or maladjusted plane.

The gaps are another issue centered on your technique. When doing a panel glue up (and that can be a small panel door or a large table) the principles are the same:

1. The edges need to be straight and matching
2. The glue up needs to be done right. (alternating clamps, correct preparation of edges to name two).

I suggest you abandon your pocket screw technique as it is fraught with difficulties such as:

1. You are screwing across the grain.
2. The boards will tend to misalign as you set the screw, the glue providing lubrication for the "slip".

Here is how I suggest you do a panel glue up:

First, do not mill your stock to final thickness, IOW, wood that is oversized (L&W) and over thick. This gives leeway and takes much of the alignment pressure out of the glue up. That said, try to be as accurate as possible to reduce the amount of work flattening the panel.

Lay out the boards paying particular attention to the lengthwise grain direction. If you don't do this, you will have issues with tear out when planing if two adjacent boards have grain going opposite directions. I am much more concerned about this than "growth rings up/rings down".

Once you get that figured out, mark the boards to keep them oriented.

I'm using a machine jointer, but the principle is the same for a hand plane: The first intention is to joint the edges straight. The second intention is to make the edges 90°. This can be accomplished by dialing in the jointer fence or with a hand plane. The technique I use is alternate faces, IOW face to face/ back to back so that any variation off 90° will cancel out with complimentary angles.

Fine Woodworking has a very good library of information related to preparing stock that is well worth the membership fee, IMO.

In the meantime, the only fix for your issue is to rip down the glue line and re glue it.

[Jim Becker]

(two threads merged...sorry for the out-of-order...I chose the wrong version for the "master")

Jim
Forum Moderator

[Bill Dufour]

I hadn't heard of it before either. I am not sure what it is. Although, I know it isn't eucalyptus because I bought a piece of 4/4 eucalyptus the same time I bought the canary wood.
My daughter picked both woods from some pictures on the internet and Houston Hardwoods on the NW side of Houston had them. HH surfaced the wood for me when I bought it and once we got it home and laid it out, we both liked the canary wood better than what we thought based on the pictures.

Could still be a eucalyptus since there are about 700 species of eucalyptus. Is eucalyptus common in Texas? It was planted everywhere in California by 1900 and now grows wild below the snowline. Seems like it would do well in the entire southwest. Most here is blue with some red planted as street trees.
Bill D

[Scott Bernstein]

Jeremy –

I’m a (relatively) recent entrant into woodworking and will mention some of the techniques I have tried and briefly what I learned. As others have suggested, always better to start with lumber that has been milled flat and straight, and all the same thickness. It took me quite a few projects to begin to get the hang of all the tools…jointer, table saw, planer, etc… And of course I am still learning.
I like to use biscuits or Festool Dominos in the edges of the individual pieces to help keep everything aligned during the clamping process. Of course if the biscuits/dominoes aren’t done straight they won’t help, so that’s yet another skill. It would seem to me the pocket screws should have pulled everything together tightly and I’m not sure why that would not be the case. Perhaps the screws were too short or weren’t tight enough? Or there just a ton of bow along the edges of your boards.

In any case, even starting with the most perfect boards there is usually some cleaning up to do. If the glue lines are very uneven, I think sanding with a belt sander and 60-80 grit paper could work but would take a long time. I have used a router with a big planing bit and a special router planing sled, and that has worked well for me. You can make your own sled or buy one.

I have tried a power hand planer and I find these are a little difficult to control, so I don’t use it any more.

Hand planes work great, but you need a decent quality plane that is long for jointing and a very sharp blade which is adjusted well. For a novice, like me, it took a while to learn enough about all these aspects to do a decent job – and I’m still not very good at it. I use a long wooden jointing plane and sharpen the blade with a jig and diamond plates. It looks around 18-20” long. It’s kind of fun and with a little patience works well in my experience. I agree it can also be frustrating when the plane is not adjusted just so, or the blade isn’t sharp, etc… That little plane from HD is definitely not going to do the trick – it’s just not big enough for the job.

I tried a cabinet scraper once – didn’t do the job for me.

I have another thread about my purchase of a new Hammer A3-41 jointer/planer combo. My 6" jointer and 12" planer have been great, but now I'm ready for something with a little more "oomph" and capacity. Hopefully this will help me jointing much wider boards. But, really, one can do the same with a good hand plane, tuned properly, with a little skill and patience.

Good luck!
Scott

[jeremy romoser]

A couple of questions. Did you joint the edges of the boards before joining them? Are the boards flat before you put them together? Were the boards trimmed on the table saw before joining? Do you have a ROS or belt sander?
I did not joint the edges other than to have the lumber yard surface both sides and cut one edge. I then cut the remaining rough edge with my table saw. The boards were flat before putting them together. I have a ROS. After reading the initial responses here, I thought I'd get a belt sander but now thinking I'll open up the Lie Nielson catalog and figure out which one I should start with. Seems like many use a hand plane in addition to the power tools so buying a good quality plane or two and learning how to use it will be worth it.

Yes, I always need hand tools to make adjustments even if power tools do the majority of the work. No power tool is 100% accurate. I believe Veritas planes from Lee Valley are made in US or Canada. For smoothing out wide surfaces and uneven joints on table tops, I use a jointer plane (#7 or 8) but I don't know if thats what you're supposed to use. With smaller planes, you can create low spots, IME. I've used canary wood for frames and small boxes. Nothing unusual about it as far as being temperamental or hard to work with.
Not sure if I can wait till next month but LN is having a weekend workshop event, maybe I'll learn what I need to know there.
Thanks for the response.

[jeremy romoser]

Jeremy,

What you're looking at is tear out. That is caused by several factors such as planing against the grain, or trying to plain grain that is wild, for example, swirling grain near a knot, or highly figured wood where the grain is undulating and has no pattern. Or quite simply, a dull iron and/or maladjusted plane.

The gaps are another issue centered on your technique. When doing a panel glue up (and that can be a small panel door or a large table) the principles are the same:

1. The edges need to be straight and matching
2. The glue up needs to be done right. (alternating clamps, correct preparation of edges to name two).

I suggest you abandon your pocket screw technique as it is fraught with difficulties such as:

1. You are screwing across the grain.
2. The boards will tend to misalign as you set the screw, the glue providing lubrication for the "slip".

Here is how I suggest you do a panel glue up:

First, do not mill your stock to final thickness, IOW, wood that is oversized (L&W) and over thick. This gives leeway and takes much of the alignment pressure out of the glue up. That said, try to be as accurate as possible to reduce the amount of work flattening the panel.

Lay out the boards paying particular attention to the lengthwise grain direction. If you don't do this, you will have issues with tear out when planing if two adjacent boards have grain going opposite directions. I am much more concerned about this than "growth rings up/rings down".

Once you get that figured out, mark the boards to keep them oriented.

I'm using a machine jointer, but the principle is the same for a hand plane: The first intention is to joint the edges straight. The second intention is to make the edges 90°. This can be accomplished by dialing in the jointer fence or with a hand plane. The technique I use is alternate faces, IOW face to face/ back to back so that any variation off 90° will cancel out with complimentary angles.

Fine Woodworking has a very good library of information related to preparing stock that is well worth the membership fee, IMO.

In the meantime, the only fix for your issue is to rip down the glue line and re glue it.

I agree with abandoning the PH technique. Not as much of fan now as I was after my first time using them.
I appreciate your suggestions here. I'll implement them in my next glue up. I delayed buying a jointer when I learned the lumber store would surface and edge my boards for me but might have to put it and a planer back on the list sooner than later. I am starting to like the idea of hand planes so I may tackle that next.
Thanks for your response. I appreciate it.

[jeremy romoser]

Could still be a eucalyptus since there are about 700 species of eucalyptus. Is eucalyptus common in Texas? It was planted everywhere in California by 1900 and now grows wild below the snowline. Seems like it would do well in the entire southwest. Most here is blue with some red planted as street trees.
Bill D
As far as I know, eucalyptus is not common here.

[jeremy romoser]

As a woodworker who uses hand and power tools I will offer that a well tuned, quality hand plane is a wonderful thing and anything short of that is a nightmare that breeds hatred of hand planes :). Hand planes are not alone in this category. There are several tools that will not "almost" work to any degree of satisfaction. A wonky jointer is a boat anchor, a crooked square . . . well, isn't.

Since no one offered up the jointer as the tool for the job I will assume you do not have one or have access to one. A well tuned tablesaw with a good rip blade will leave an edge rivaling a jointer. I will urge caution on the belt sander though. In inexperienced hands, a belt sander can do more damage faster than you can blink. Practice on some scrap and be sure you are getting the result you are after before you take after your canary wood.

I do not have a jointer or access to one, yet. I do have a good TS. I plan on adding some good quality hand planes and watching videos on tuning them.
Thanks for the reply.