hand planing wood that has knots

[Mike Gager]

ive just started getting into hand planing and ive been trying it out on some 2x4 fir that i plan on using to build a bench. ive been using a #4 and a block plane and i can get nice curlys however the wood has knots in it and everytime i hit one of the knots the plane stops dead and 9 times out of 10 it nicks the blade and i have to resharpen

if i avoid the knots the board doesnt get flat. what do you guys do (besides not using boards with knots!) to get by this problem? or am i doing something wrong?

[Robert Rozaieski]

Construction grade lumber is nasty stuff and not very friendly to hand tools. I try to avoid it if I can. When you buy your lumber, be very picky. I work with a lot of pine for general projects where wood species is not a priority, because it's nice to work, looks nice when left natural (i.e. not stained), ages nicely and it's cheap. I typically buy the #2 graded stuff, not the stuff labeled as clear pine which can be as expensive as hardwood. But I search through the piles of #2 at the home center (where I usually buy pine) and only choose boards that have very few, small knots (see my post below called "Lets Build Something Together" for some pics of the pine I typically work with). Sometimes I come home with only 1 or 2 boards and sometimes I buy none at all if I don't like what I see. I'm pretty picky about the boards I choose at the home center but that's the price of being cheap :D .

With that said, sometimes you cannot avoid knots. A knot is basically end grain and cuts like end grain does so you need to take very light cuts and your iron needs to be very sharp. Skewing the plane also helps. In many cases, you can plan your cuts around knots in the board and simply cut them away, avioding them all together. This is my preference. I do this a lot with the pine boards I work with. Buy them extra long and extra wide as these tend to be more knot free or at least have a lower density of knots since the bigger boards are taken from bigger/taller trees. By using the longer/wider boards, you have more room to work around knots. Cutting them out of the board is the only easy way to deal with them. If you must keep them in there, you will need to take very light cuts over the knots, sharpen often, and maybe even increase the bevel angle to strengthen the edge. The dead stopping and chipping in your iron is likely due to trying to take too thick of a cut over the knot. While it will work in the long grain, you simply cannot take a thick cut in end grain.

[Jack Camillo]

Do you have an adjustable mouth on your plane? I close up the mouth pretty small and ensure the blade is razor sharp. (I use a low-angle plane) Works good for me, but never tried planing soft wood like fir.

[Wilbur Pan]

The first thing to do is to get boards with as few knots as possible, as Robert said.

But if you already have your boards, then if your board is going to be part of the base, I wouldn't worry so much about making the knots perfectly smooth. If it's going to be part of the top, I would seriously consider chopping or drilling out the knot, and putting in a patch of knot free wood in its place.

[Jim Koepke]

Another problem with knots is the grain tends to swirl around them causing tear out when passing over a knot that has been cut through.

I sometimes plane up to the knot and skip it. After the rest of the piece is planed, I will come back to the knot and work it by it self with what ever works best, chisel, rasp, sand paper, plane or dynamite.

jtk

[Sam Yerardi]

I'm sort of with Jim on this one. It depends on the knot. What is the size of the knot? Is it a 'solid' knot? Is there a lot of wild grain around it? A good example of what you're talking about is planing red aromatic cedar. The knots drive me crazy, but if you take your time and plan on the plane stroke before and through the knot, usually you'll have some luck. I skew the plane and just prior to moving into the knot I will skew a bit more while at the same time moving the plane in a skewed direction so as to develop a slicing motion. Sometimes you find that you have to turn the board around (or yourself) and approach the knot from the other direction after the knot because the grain has changed direction. So you have to approach it on a knot-by-knot basis. That's knot the way I would like to do it, but...:)

[Mike Gager]

yeah jim thats the other problem im having with this wood is the grain switches directions like 3 or 4 times on the same 2x4 lol

oh well at least i learned something today! (pick wood out more carefully!)

[Robert Rozaieski]

yeah jim thats the other problem im having with this wood is the grain switches directions like 3 or 4 times on the same 2x4 lol

oh well at least i learned something today! (pick wood out more carefully!)
With the construction grade stuff, one suggestion that I will make is to buy the widest boards you can get, like 2x12 or 2x10, and rip your 2x4s from them. It's more work having to rip them down but you will find that you will get much better 2x4 stock this way with a lot fewer knots. This is the way Chris Schwarz gets all his 2x material for all of the 2x workbenches he has made. Whatever you do, stay away from 2x4s. They have the most knots. The standard 2x4 stock comes from small trees with tons of low limbs or the tops of larger trees where the limbs begin to emerge. The trees necessary to get 2x12s from are much taller and most of the limbs are much higher than where the 2x12 material is cut from (like where the 2x4s are cut from ;) ).

[Jeff Wittrock]

I have always had the same problem with the "bargain basement" lumber I often use.

I've found that the best material I can find at a good price is southern yellow pine. I usually buy 2X10 or 2X12s and rip what I need from these. If I pick around a bit, I can usually find pretty clear stuff, and with the large widths, I can usually cut out a very offensive knot without too much waste.

I happen to like southern yellow pine even if it were not for the good price. It works well, and If I hunt around to find the stuff with nice close growth rings, it looks very pretty to me. My wife is a bit picker about the type of wood I bring into the house and turns her noise up at pine. I have no idea why. To me, a nice piece straight grained pine with a few pin knots is as pretty as they come.

[Mike Gager]

whoa i just google removing knots from wood and got this thread haha

[Mike Gager]

well guys i went to borg and looked at their 2x10s and 2x12s and everything they had was cracked/split/warped or as in the case of the 2 following boards full of knots

86364

86365

right in the path of some nice 2x4s!

[John Dykes]

Just got back from HD looking for SYP \ Douglas Fir (ala Chris Schwartz)....

Picked through all the 2x wide boards, and even most of the 4x4 and 4x6 stuff.

I agree bleh.

Building a bench in Denver could get expensive.

- jbd

[Randy Klein]

Are you looking at the 16 footers? Thats where I go to. Bring your cutlist, drag out a good 16', mark your cuts (with some error) and have them cut it down for you. I just did this two days ago and they didn't even charge me for the cuts.

[Mike Gager]

yeah i looked at them all. would maybe get 1 clean 8' 2x4 out of the 16' 2x12s they had