Verawood for plane sole... Seems high friction, not low. What have you found?

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

I'm slowly working away at a krenov-style plane - same one as my other questions. Today I went back to planing the verawood sole, only this time I was using my scrap-made wooden plane instead of a metal plane. It has a hard maple sole, and it usually just glides over wood. Not now, not on verawood. It has very high friction. I tried the maple plane on other wood, it glides. Verawood, no glide.

I chose verawood because I'd heard it is similar to lignum vitae in both density and slickness. I've never used lignum vitae, nor Argentinean l.v., so I can't compare.

I started with a freshly sharpened iron.

Also, and possibly related, I very quickly get a build up on the edges of tools when working this wood. It sticks very hard to the metal, very dry, hard, powdery when flaked off, but even then leaves a very slight color/texture on the tool edge. It feels just like rust when you scratch it with your fingernail (fingernail on chalkboard feeling for me - ACK!) but isnt' rust - too fast/thick buildup, wrong color, too powdery, etc. It rapidly closes up the tight mouth of the plane, coated saw teeth after a few strokes. I wonder if the buildup is part of the friction issue. I don't mind the slow going from this, the allergic response, the hard working, the frequent sharpening if this will result in a good plane sole, but it would be silly to work all this way and have my first proper plane end up a mess from selecting the wrong wood.

I'd like any thoughts on the issue - I need to decide whether to continue with this wood or start over. I already spent the time ripping and resawing it with a pull saw, a lot of work as it is so hard and the plane is about two feet long.

The rest of the plane is red oak. I assume it would be a poor choice for the sole, am I wrong? If so, I can just leave the sole off. Worst case, I'll leave it off and add one or an insert when needed. Still, I'd like to have the hard sole.

Thanks

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

Sorry, forgot in all that wordiness to make it clear that it isn't a matter of cutting difficulty - tried with iron not extended, same results.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I don't have any input on the friction issue, but I think there must be some Neander corollary to "discretion is the better part of valor" - I feel like you've put forward plenty of reasons not to use this wood, (not the least or which is the allergic reaction you've mentioned - which is enough to make me reconsider a wood choice) but I'm not quite sure what the case for using this wood is. Plenty of other woods have worked fine in wooden planes over the years - most of the vintage tools we see today that have suffered from wear also where used much much more than any of us are going to use them.

There are woods that I will just pass on if I'm working by hand, because I know trying to "tame" them is going to be a hassle, and I'd rather get more done using a different wood than suffer for what are questionable returns.

Only you can do this equation for yourself - maybe dealing with this wood really is worth it to you, but I'd take a little bit to look at this objectively. Just my opinion, and I certainly don't mean this as an attack or to put you down, and I'm sorry I don't have any information about the wood in question to add.

[Dale Sautter]

I've soled a few planes with Verawood, but not planed like you are doing. Vera just loves to be milled with a router, make the shop smell like lemon spice. What I did was to leave the sides long on the bottom, mill the "base" sole so that there was a roughly 1/4" deep dado down the middle and glued (epoxy on one plane, gorilla glue on a couple others). Erm, pardon the ascii art :

| |
| |
|__________________|
|_| |_|
|__________________|

Sacrilege I know, but the router was my friend with this vera.

...well, scratch that... the formatting didn't hold

[David Weaver]

It should be fine. It may just be slow because the wood is hard and freshly cut and is actually hard enough to dig into the maple plane you have.

Once it's on a plane, it should take wax like any other wood and be super slick.

If I were going to plane it, I would want to use the heaviest plane I could find, and not necessarily one made of maple or beech, because they will not have the momentum to plane it nicely. if that's what you have, though, that's what you use.

No matter how hard verawood is, it will not be nearly as hard as any metal soled plane, and should be slick on those.

I turned a mallet out of the stuff earlier this year (never made a plane out of it, though) and it's so dense and hard and heavy that I noticed (aside from the fact that one mallet dulled my roughing gouge) that the chips that come off the lathe really sting when they hit you, and they're hard and sharp little chips even when the wood is wet.

[Mark Baldwin III]

You mentioned an allergic reaction to the wood, that's usually a good time to stop working with it! With some woods, the reactions get worse each time. I had a hideous reaction to some rosewood earlier this year. It really did a number on me, and started a chain of events that landed me in the hospital for a few days. Not trying to scare anyone, but wood allergies can be dangerous. So can tomato allergies...betcha didn't know that people were allergic to those!

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

Thanks for all the answers. I think Joshua is right - it's time to try something else. And no offense taken! I was pushing ahead out of stubbornness, and in spite of the long list of complaints I had against the wood it was still fun. I guess because I was still making progress, albeit slowly. Also, it is the wood I have and I have enough for a few planes, so I wanted it to work. However, today I tried hard to get a proper surface on the wood, one without small tearouts, and found it was beyond me. I was not careful enough in selecting the piece I have and the grain switches a few times in the length. Not a problem normally, but here I need to plane full length - only way with my skill level to keep it super flat. That left sanding, and that is when the allergies go from slight irritation to serious burning skin on my face, sneezing, watery eyes, sinuses burning... all that after only a couple minutes. I hate to think of what it might have been like had I continued.

Mark, tomatoes? I didn't even know people could be allergic to wood until last week. No wood, not even rosewood, is worth a hospital visit. I hadn't thought about escalating problems and increasing sensitivity. I'll have to consider that if I return to this wood later - I was thinking I'd stash it until I had a toothing plane or a proper high angle plane appropriate to difficult wood.