Veritas LAJ: Curly maple smoother?

[Ken Cohen]

Hi--

Newbie questions and embarrassing indecision, so I appreciate the help and patience.

Long story, but I have a long unused Veritas BU LAJ waiting for either return or use. (I also have vintage #5 and #6 Stanley's waiting for tune-up, along with a great #4 old Stanley/Hock that I use all the time). I bought the BU LAJ before learning traditional grinding/hand held stone technique (no microbevels or jigs) at a week long hand ww class. So, I've got bevel down sharpening "mastered" (joke), but have no confidence in my BU sharpening skills using these techniques.

I thought I had made up my mind to return the BU LAJ and finish the #5 and #6, but a new situation emerged. I am building a desktop out of curly maple and am facing all the usual tear out challenges. Not sure my trusty #4 is up to the challenge. Fallback is sanding. Then, I remembered that a BU plane ground to 50 degrees is supposedly a perfect smoothing solution for curly grain. Problem is that I have a jack, not a smoother.

So, question is: How well will a LV BU LAJ with a 50 degree grind perform to smooth my curly maple desktop?

Plus, I welcome any other thoughts on the mess of indecision I have created for myself.

Thanks in advance for the help and patience.

(PS: I have $200+ into the LAJ and ~$70 into the #5/#6 without the needed replacement blades. I've kind of double purchased by accident and would rather spend the extra $$ on something else,)

[David Weaver]

At some point you will need to plane end grain. It may be years, but you will appreciate having the low angle plane around when you have to do it.

I almost sold mine off a couple of years ago, but now that I'm replacing my moulding planes with garage made, it is very very nice to have the LA jack to clean up their ends.

at 50 degrees and sharp and the mouth tight, it will take care of most curly maple without issue. If it doesn't, increase it 10 degrees, and it will plane any curly maple you can find.

Sharpen it the same way as you would a bevel down plane, except it will require more camber if you want to use camber due to the 12 degree bed. The principle is the same, at the bleeding edge of the blade, the geometry has to be good and the polish needs to go to the edge.

[lowell holmes]

I have both LA BU planes with all of the irons. There's not much they can't handle. I would not part with either plane. They will handle curly maple with the 50 degree irons. The toothing iron is there when it really gets tough.

[Bill Houghton]

Sharpening is sharpening, isn't it? Granted, if you're going to a radical 50 degree bevel, you'll need to practice holding the iron at a different angle; but I would think the skill set would be basically the same.

I'd plunge in, if I were you.

[Zach England]

I keep my bevel-up planes (all three of them) for when I want a perfectly square iron and my bevel-down for when I want a slight camber.

[David Gendron]

IMO, keep the BU Jack, it is a great plane for shooting board, for planing end grain(even if I use my LA block for that!!) and it would work good anought to smooth triky grain! Keep the cuting edge some what straight and realy sharp... You sharpen them the same way as regular bevel down irons... and you have a plane that will be a god plane for smoothing. That said, you could put a back bevel on the blade of your #4 and it should do just as good!!
Just my 0.02

[Adam Johan Bergren]

I've used a 40 degree blade (comes as 38 degrees, but I sharpened it a 40) to plane curly maple, and even worse woods with very good results. Thus, to answer your question, yes, the 50 degree blade should hand just about anything.

[Johnny Kleso]

I'd use a card scraper on bad spots..

You can use a No.7 for smoothing but if you have a small bench plane you can plane just the bad spot and not have to do the whole lenght..

[Tony Zaffuto]

I have a LV low angle bevel up smoother and had some curly maple drawer fronts to smooth. Used the toothed blade, then the 50 degree HA blade and still had a spot or two to touch with a scraper.

Try to stay from using sandpaper before the plane or scraper as the grit will kill the super-honed sharpness you'll need with your blades and scraper. Also, it's easy with the scraper to end with an uneven surface as the scraper will take more material in the softer spots of the maple and end with a slightly shallow spot.

[David Weaver]

Aside from a small 55 degree infill plane, the end-all tool to have around for spot cleanup without hollowing a section out is the little LN scraper with the corners eased and a burr rolled.

It will leave an "almost" planed surface, one you won't be able to spot as being scraped after there's any finish at all, and it's a cream puff to use (the bigger scrapers can be a bear to use if you have anything more than a tissue depth of cut).

I had a big scraper, and Len on woodnet mumbled something one time about liking the little one so much that he uses it all the time and doesn't use a big one. Being that Len is a tool pig of the first degree, I figured he probably made that decision not for lack of trying piles of tools, and I think he's right. I sold off my big scraper plane after his unintentional egging me on to get the small LN. I can do large panels with the small scraper just as fast. It's bronze, you don't have to worry about rust, and it has the trick adjuster that the big scrapers have.

[Ken Cohen]

As always, thanks to all for the helpful responses.

Clear take-away: my BU LAJ with high angle grind will do a good job smoothing the curly maple.

The responses also helped with my indecision:

I'll keep the LAJ for tough figure (high angle) and end grain (shooting, low angle).

I'll keep either the 5 or 6, grind some camber into the blade and use for aggressive cutting. I can hopefully resell the other plane.

My concern about honing the BU was limited to adding the slight camber to the edges to prevent edge gouging. With the bevel down, I simply add the extra finishing strokes on either edge.

Again, pardon my inexperience: What's the right way ease the BU blade edge to prevent side gouging?

Thanks to all for the great help.

[David Weaver]

Same way you'd do any other iron, you just have to remove more of the edges since the effective angle needing easing is 12 degrees instead of 45 degrees.

[David Keller NC]

The responses also helped with my indecision:

I'll keep the LAJ for tough figure (high angle) and end grain (shooting, low angle).

I'll keep either the 5 or 6, grind some camber into the blade and use for aggressive cutting. I can hopefully resell the other plane.

Ken - Keep all three of your planes. The LAJ (with a low-angle grind & hone) is excellent for end-grain shooting (planing), and you can set up the #6 with a very pronounced camber and an open mouth. You can use this plane as a "roughing" plane that will allow you to flatten out a board that's way too big for your machines. You can then set up the #5 with a very slight camber and a relatively tight mouth, and use it as an all-around bevel-down plane for smoothing large panels, adjusting the fit of a cabinet door, etc... - anywhere that a #4 is a bit too short and won't maintain a straight edge or face.

One note, that perhaps you've already found out about. The one disadvantage of a high effective cutting angle (whether achieved with a high bevel grind on a bevel-up plane, or a back-bevel on a bevel-down plane) is that it requires considerably more effort to push than a lower effective cutting angle. That doesn't matter if you've got one or two boards with curly/figured grain that need to be straightened/squared/smoothed, but using the high-angle plane exclusively will definitely add to the "oomph" factor required to build projects, and you really don't need it in well-behaved grain.