Jointing/Planing Curly Maple

[Dick Strauss]

I recently got a stash of very curly maple at a very reasonable price. I had some problems with tearout while jointing and planing the first board I tried. I plan to have the knives professionally sharpened before my next attempt to make sure that isn't the problem even though I don't have the problem with regular hard maple using the current setup.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help smooth it out? I've heard somewhere that you can spray a light mist on the wood surface to help solve this issue. Does this work? Does it cause problems for the knives/blades (like rust) or does it cause the blades to dull quicker?

TIA,
Dick

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

The problem is that the curls involve grain direction changes.

I've only ever had success planing it by hand, myself.

[Ian Abraham]

Dampening the wood can help, it wont hurt your planer blades, they are warm and moving fast, any dampness wont stay on them.

I find that it's best to just machine close to final thickness with very thin passes, then sand off the last bit to remove the small tearouts.

A bit of skill with a handplane / scraper is probably a better option for taking off that last little bit though. :rolleyes:

Cheers

Ian

[lou sansone]

I have tried the damp technique with mixed results. it does seem to work. scrapers work pretty well. Personally I like my wide belt sander for this particular job.

Lou

[Rob Millard]

Wetting the surface does work quite well. I take a rag and wipe on a generous coat to both sides and let it soak in for a few minutes. The water will soak in enough to allow two passes, through the planer before you have to wet it again. Be sure to let the boards out in the open air at least over night, before stickering, or using them, to allow the extra moisture to evaporate. When I’m finished , I clean out the planer and run a dry board through a few times to make sure any moisture has been “burned” off.
Another thing I do to the planer knives, is hone a slight back bevel (5° ) on the cutting edge. I do this with a diamond hone. This bevel needs only to be a few thousands of an inch wide, so you can’t really see it, but it makes for more of a scraping cut, and reduces tear out.
While I don’t own a jointer, these same techniques would apply to it also.
Here is a link with some more information about working with curly maple.
http://americanfederalperiod.com/COF%20P1.htm
Rob Millard

[Jim Becker]

Additionally, I find that running it through at a slight angle is very helpful with figured stock.

[lou sansone]

Rob... your too much ! your work is just so good. What a pleasure to look at.
lou

[Dick Strauss]

Thanks for all of the suggestions and comments.

Rob, your work is drop dead gorgeous!!!

[Lee Schierer]

The only thing I can add to the previous posts is to take very light cuts. Try planing from each end to see which direction gives less tearout.