Planing Bubinga and Bolivian Rosewood

[Raymond Fries]

I am planning on resawing some 4/4 Bubinga and Rosewood and then running it through a planer to finish it off to 3/8" stock for some boxes.

It will be run through a 15" Powermatic planer. I do not have a drum sander and wondering if these two woods will plane smooth or chip because of their hardness. I have never worked with either of these woods before.

Will Bubinga and Rosewood come out of the planer real smooth?

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

[Per Swenson]

Raymond,

The bubinga is going to be tough.

In order to get it smooth,

you will need alot of neutral grain filler

and sanding.

The rose wood will fair better.

Then again, nothing really comes out of a planer finished.;)


Per

[Keith Cope]

Raymond,

You may have a tough go with the rosewood as well if it has much figure. Light passes will help.

Keith

[Dan Lautner]

Maybe this is where a shelix head would help. Has anyone used a shelix head on these types of woods? I am planning a project with cocobolo and looking at upgrading to a shelix head.

Dan

[Danny Thompson]

I resawed some 8/4 Bubinga and planed it in a Dewalt benchtop (DW734)--i.e., no special equipment. It came out beautifully smooth.

[Seth Poorman]

Raymond,

You may have a tough go with the rosewood as well if it has much figure. Light passes will help.

Keith

And sharp blades !!!!!!!;)

[Steve knight]

I have planed a lot of bubinga and rosewood and purpleheart and such. the harder tropicals tend to cut cleaner then American woods do. seldom do I get tearout with bubinga. well when I had some really curly bubinga I did but that was the exception. so you should have no real problems.

[Matt Campbell]

My experience has been that bubinga comes out to an almost glassy surface once ran through the planer.

[Raymond Fries]

Thanks for the tips guys.

The only Bubinga around here is at Woodcraft at $16.16 per BF and do not want something that cannot be machined well.

Will Titebond glue work OK for the exotic wood, or, is something else better?

[Montgomery Scott]

You are getting reamed if you buy bubinga at $16/bd ft. At most you should have to pay $12/bd ft and my local place sells it for $8/bd ft. At that price I think you might do better mail ordering the stuff.

I've never had problems planing either Bolivina rosewood or straight hrained bubinga. I did have a few boards of bubinga that had wildly undulating grain that tore out pretty badly so I cut it up and used it for a segmented turning.

[Larry Fox]

The only Bubinga around here is at Woodcraft at $16.16 per BF and do not want something that cannot be machined well.

That is WAY too high - if you need any quantity of it (like something more than 2bd/ft) I would consider ordering it. Even with shipping you will come out ahead. I called Groff and Groff the other day looking for some and it was $10.00 / bdft. Hearne has it for $12.00.

[Mike Spanbauer]

The portable planers (benchtop) do a better job on these woods due to higher knife cut count, hence the 734's experience in here. Your PM will do a fine job at thicknessing, but bubinga is TOUGH, TOUGH stuff.

You've a few options. Buy a great resaw blade dedicated to this job (100' or less?) and really take your time to produce something very accurate for thickness, which incidentally won't have tear out. THEN use a cabinet scraper or a very high angle smoothing plane to smooth the boards out (50* ++). This is what I do as my planer performs worse than yours likely will. (Coco, Wenge, Bubinga, Padauk).

Otherwise, you can give the planer a shot and skew the boards aggressively through the blades to give you a "helical like" cut.. assuming that your bubinga is relatively straight grained. If it's wavy, squirrley, curly, anything but straight... well you'll likely experience tear out :(

I'm still going to go w/ my option 1 :)

Alternatively, you can call a local cabinet shop and get some time on their widebelt after you resaw the pieces. They can deal with the dust too, which on harder woods, is much finer than on most of the typical suspects in our shops.

g'luck, and pics when finished please :)

mike