tearout help!!!!!

[scott pollack]

hey guys, i need some advise please. i bought some rough 4/4 red oak yesterday. i got out my jack plane tonight and started to clean up the wood. it seems that the grain in spots is running in both directions and im getting tearout. skewing the plane helps but it still tears some. is this typical of red oak and what can i do? thank you for the help.

scotty

[harry strasil]

sharpen blade as sharp as possible, just enough stick out on blade to make a shaving, a skew aangle, lots of passes and pray, if nothing else machine plane.

[Alan Turner]

hey guys, i need some advise please. i bought some rough 4/4 red oak yesterday. i got out my jack plane tonight and started to clean up the wood. it seems that the grain in spots is running in both directions and im getting tearout. skewing the plane helps but it still tears some. is this typical of red oak and what can i do? thank you for the help.

scotty
Having your iron sharp is a good beginning, but also of critical importance regarding tearout is the mouth opening. I didn't appreciate the importance of this until I got an HNT Gordon smoother, which has about a .005 mouth opening. With the mouth set so tight, the downward pressure of the planing action means that the fibers running uphill are broken off immediately, and thus there is little or no tearout. With the Gordon, which I bought for a special project, I was albe to plane curly soft maple with literally zero tearout. Having learned that lesson, I went back to my L-N 2 bench plane, and adjusted the mouth tighter, and the plane worked incredibly better. I acquired the No. 2 probably 15 years ago, and it was my first plane, other than a Stanley block plane. I didn't use it much in those years. Only over the past 3 or so years have I really gotten into planes, and the mouth setting is of much importance. Of course, for the tight mough to be effective as described, you need to have the mouth touching the wood, so lapping the sole may be needed.
So much to learn; so little time.

[Stephen D'Souza]

To prevent tearout, you must have a very sharp iron. In addition, ensure that the mouth is fine and you take a correspondingly light cut or you will clog the throat. Ofcourse, the sole of your plane should be flat for this to work well.

- Stephen

[John Wadsworth]

You may find that wetting down the unruly spots helps. Or maybe not...