Sipo mahogany

[Lasse Hilbrandt]

Im making a tray for our bathtub, for champagne and strawberry...have to keep the wife happy..

I began with 2x4 stock and began to prepare the edges for gluing. I had lots of tearout in the beginning. I used my 4½ and LN 62. To my surprice the 4½ were better, but still tear out. It didn´t matter too much because I was going to glue the faces together, but now I dread for planing the faces..

I think its due to changing grain directions on the mahogany

Any advices?

[Derek Cohen]

Lasse, predictable questions ...

Are you setting the chipbreaker close on the #4 1/2?

Are you using a high cutting angle (+/- 62 degrees) on the BU?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Bill Houghton]

You're not alone. I don't much like the mahogany surrogates/replacements. Not just the tearout, but, for me, the wood feels dead somehow. Not like walnut, oak, birch, pine (most pines) - woods where you feel like you're in a conversation with the wood as you work it.

[Mark Maleski]

Like Bill says, you’re not alone. I haven’t used silo, but have experience with both “genuine” mahogany(sweetenia sp) and khaya sp. (replacement from Africa). The African stuff tend to be ribbon striped, I.e., reversing grain. IMO you can’t plane those ribbons cleanly even with the highest tuned smooth plane, and have to follow up with a card scraper on each and every ribbon.

[Mark Maleski]

Also, Bill Pavlak has a recent blog post @ Finewoodworking on using a toothing plane to get ribbon mahogany to a smooth surface.

[Lasse Hilbrandt]

Yes the chipbreaker is as close as I can get it.

To be honest, I bought the LN62 from a local guy in good used condition. The blade were sharp and I did not check the angle.

[Lasse Hilbrandt]

Thanks, I will try to find it and read it.

[Tom Trees]

Yes the chipbreaker is as close as I can get it.

That's just the case of too much camber on your iron, and if you still can't plane in either direction...their's still too much camber for the iron to get close enough.
The kind of camber that is required isn't noticeable at a close glance, it only gets noticeable when you pair it with the cap iron and start to set it close enough.
Mouth must not be closed up also.

Sipo is easy to plane as in, it is fairly soft like meranti, at the right setting you should be getting straight shavings not curls...
and you will notice a waxy burnished look to them.

Tom

[Doug Hepler]

Lasse

My two cents worth is (1) rotate the plane horizontally 5-15 degrees to the direction you are planing. That will increase slicing acton and (I am told) increase the effective angle of attack.
(2) make sure the plane iron is sharp enough to slice paper without tearing it
(3) if all else fails use a card scraper or cabinet scraper.

OK- that's three cents worth.

Doug

[Jim Koepke]

rotate the plane horizontally 5-15 degrees to the direction you are planing. That will increase slicing acton and (I am told) increase the effective angle of attack.

Did you mean to say it decreases the effective angle of attack?

It is kind of like the old bicycling trick of tacking across the roadway when going uphill. The lower angle of attack tends to slice the wood more and lift it less.

jtk

[Doug Hepler]

Jim,

I have to confess that I meant "increase" and that I was wrong. As I said, it is received wisdom and I got it confused with a steeper bevel angle on a BU plane.

Thanks,
Doug