I took delivery on my LN 4 1/2 (thanks for the recommendations), and now I have a question or two.
Question #1) How smooth will a well tuned, properly used, smoother actually get a board?
Those that have been following my saga might remember I'm working on lots of curly maple drawers and got the 4 1/2 to smooth the fronts. Well, I've test driven my new smoother on some scrap curly maple (if there IS such a thing), and I'm not terribly thrilled with the overall finish. The piece I deliberately chose had some planer ridges from a nick in one of my planer knives. The smoother removed the ridges nicely, but the overall finish is no where near what I can accomplish with my Festool 150/3 running through the grits up to 320.
I took progressively thinner shavings, as hopefully you can see in this pic.
I started with substantial shavings, progressing down to whisper thin shavings that were so thin they wouldn't even stay together as they ejected. But the surface still isn't what my finger tips know as 'smooth'.
Am I doing something wrong, or do I have artificially high expectations of my smoother?
Question #2) What's the deal with 'curved blades'?
I got both of David Charlesworth's DVD when I got the 4 1/2, and after sitting through them both a few times, I'm wondering if I need to use his trick of rounding over the blade edges. I'm not sure if the not-so-smooth surface I'm getting is being caused by corner gouging from the iron, but hey, I'm new and don't know much of anything yet...
Does everyone here already know about and use the 'curved blade' technique? I searched on here and only one reference in a mini-review of the DVDs.
Thanks...
Marty