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Thread: Taming white pine tearout

  1. #1
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    Taming white pine tearout

    I'm struggling with tearout planing air-dried white pine. Planks are ~20" wide and have reversing grain, making it hard to work with the grain, and tearout is surprisingly hard to avoid. If seems much more tearout-prone, than say, white oak or cherry with similar grain structure. I'm using bevel down Record planes, (45 deg. angle); blades are as sharp as I can get them. I've fiddled with the chipbreaker and moving the frog forward but haven't hit a sweet spot. I wonder if it's time to try one of those bevel-down high-angle planes.
    Any advice would be appreciated, an thanks in advance.
    Last edited by Josko Catipovic; 07-23-2020 at 7:03 AM.

  2. #2
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    I'd try to get your #4 working better. High angles are limited to pretty thin shavings, and they are better with harder woods than soft.

    The chipbreaker should be able to, at the very least, limit the tearout to something that can be sanded out relatively easy. Make sure the front edge of the chipbreaker is smooth and that the angle at the tip is somewhere between 50 and 80 degrees (I use closer to 50). Make sure it seats well on the back of the iron so that shavings can't get under the leading edge.

    Now try setting the chipbreaker as close as you can to the iron's edge, but where you can still just barely see the edge. Usually this is a little bit *too* close, and will cause a lot of planing resistance, make accordion shavings, and leave a dull surface. But you should see some effects and you shouldn't see tearout. Then you can try pulling the CB back a tiny bit. At some point the planing resistance should go down significantly, and the shavings will straighten up and kind of shoot up out of the plane. Those straight shavings are usually a tell that the CB setting is pretty good.

    The ideal CB setting varies depending on the wood and on the depth of cut. A heavier cut requires a looser (farther back) CB setting, a thinner cut requires a closer one. In general you want the CB as far back as you can get it while still mitigating tearout. This ends up being pretty close, though, in absolute terms. Almost always much less than 1/32" except maybe on a jack plane.

    Here's a video from David Weaver where he does a decent job explaining and showing these CB settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pAVgfSPMN0

    Good luck.

  3. #3
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    Try putting a small secondary bevel on the top side of the blade to increase the effective bedding angle. You can easily simulate a 50* or 55* high angle plane with a very tiny supplemental bevel. If you don't like, it grinds out easily.

    I keep a spare blade ground with a higher angle just for that purpose.
    Sharp solves all manner of problems.

  4. #4
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    And if you’re not already doing so, angle the plane when taking cuts...creates more of a slicing action.

  5. #5
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    Sharp, Sharp, Sharp - the softwoods are so gnarly at the best of times, but sharp ( at least 8000 grit, done properly ) is the starting point. I hate to say it, but I have held sharpening demos, classes, plane demos: so many people have said ' I thought I knew what sharp was, but you have opened my eyes ' - method doesn't matter, but I used to use Scary Sharp, but have now long used waterstones - 1,000 grit to 8,000 grit.
    As Phil suggested, skewing the plane can be a big aid.
    Good Luck
    Dave B

  6. #6
    Fully agreed with Robert on this.
    You will have to move your frog back flush with the casting again, as a close or fully influenced cap iron setting will not work with the mouth
    being so small, and just chatter chatter chatter, if you can get it to cut at all, and if you can it makes it really difficult to push the plane.
    It will make you think the cap is too close to the edge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Tight mouths plays absolutely no part whatsoever in tearout elimination or reduction for a 'correctly set' double iron plane.

    Anyone who thinks not, and got by before with a closed throat has not planed in tough enough situations yet, and obviously hasn't
    seen Kato and Kawai video.....
    (An iron and cap iron stuck on a milling machine, whilst the timber is transversed across, there is no area in front of the cut to hold down the fibres, yet still works)
    ===
    Kudos to Warren Mickley who goaded David W to learn how to set the double iron plane correctly, as Mr. Weaver was still experiencing tearout
    with planes built to very high standards. (in accordance with the single iron high angle planes, the likes being used today by most trendy youtubers)
    Look at this high angle plane with a swords worth of steel for the cutter he built, which he regards nowadays as a 'paperweight'.

    Many thanks Warren, I haven't used a scraper plane since, nor do I need my irons to be crazy sharp, if it will shave hair its good enough.
    Tom
    Last edited by Tom Trees; 07-23-2020 at 10:27 AM.

  7. #7
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    Josko, all the above is good advice.

    To repeat:

    1) Get your plane's blade as sharp as you possibly can. As Rob says at the end of his posts, "Sharp solves all manner of problems."

    This begs the question of what are you using to sharpen you blades?

    My sharpening is on oilstones (black Arkansas), water stones (Norton 8000) and stropped. My sharpening knowledge and skill is continually improving. It is a never ending journey, so do not become disappointed.

    2) How thick are your shavings?

    The finer the shaving the less tear out:

    First Hock Shavings.jpg

    This is from ~12 years ago. My 'extreme' shaving examples have become thinner since. Often such thin shavings are not needed. When fighting gnarly grain, they can be very helpful.

    Tear out is material being lifted by leverage of the shaving as it is cut. A thinner shaving has less ability to lift excess material.

    3) The chip breaker is your friend. Learning to use the chip breaker takes a bit of work and time. If you can, spend some time with a piece of scrap trying different distances from the edge of the blade to the chip breaker to help build your knowledge of its workings.

    4) Back bevels may help. This is something my blades haven't needed in my work.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  8. #8
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    I successfully planed some gnarly knotty pine this past weekend with my Bailey #5. It had been sitting around for about 5 years, so certainly at equilibrium moisture content. Here’s the combination that worked for me:

    1. Super sharp blade: more than sharp enough to cleanly push-pare the end grain of said pine.
    2. Closed-up chipbreaker (1/64? from the edge) well-mated to a cambered blade (I don’t know the exact radius but shavings that were about 1 thou in the center ended up about an inch or so wide). No back bevel—flat back all the way to the edge.
    3. Frog lined up with the back of the mouth so that the back of the mouth helps support the blade
    4. Light cuts (shallow enough that the shavings were feathering out at the edges of the blade)
    5. Sharpen up frequently.
    6. Flip the plane around or skew as needed.

    Planing over knots and reversing grain the worst I got was a fuzzy surface if I started going against the grain. Flip the plane around and hit that spot again, skew as needed and the whole thing came out smooth with plenty of chatoyance.

    I hope this helps.

    Best regards,
    Michael Bulatowicz
    Last edited by Michael Bulatowicz; 07-23-2020 at 10:32 AM. Reason: Another detail on my setup

  9. #9
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    Prior to the introduction of the double iron, a steeper angle of attack was a method to prevent tear out. However, the steeper the angle, the harder it gets to push the plane. Double irons were introduced in the early 18th century. Here's an interesting article on an early smoother plane found in London. (On a minor digression, I recently saw a video of someone tuning a Japanese plane with a double iron, interestingly the chip breaker was not screwed to the iron.)

    Over 10 years ago the importance of the chip breaker caused quite lively discussions on many forums. Given that the most readily available metal smoother is a double iron bevel down Bailey pattern plane, it stands to reason that one should set it up to take maximum advantage of it. Certainly one can be contrarian and spend 10x or more on a metal bevel up, infill or a single iron wooden plane and run with it.

    The use of the chip breaker to prevent tear out was not a mystery and it was viewed for that function since its introduction. Here are the instructions on setting up the plane iron from The Handyman's Book by Paul Hasluck, 1905.

    20200723_112749.jpg

    Rafael

    P.S. I personally would not put a back bevel to my iron as it can possible create a gap between it and the chip breaker and cause choking. Spend some time setting up your chip breaker and try again. Devid Weaver's video or this video series are very helpful.

  10. #10
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    Faced with a similar problem using Quartersawn White Oak (reversing grain is highly figured) I switched to a finely tuned floor scraper. Once the proper hook angle was found, it left a finish that needed minimal sanding.

    https://m.imgur.com/gallery/nxLbKim

  11. #11
    The only white pine I had trouble with is something called Idaho Pine. Never got its real name. Was soft ,yet brittle,and
    had reversing grain.

  12. #12
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    Thank you, guys. Jim and Mike get the gold star for pointing out shaving thickness. Since it's so much easier to get a full length, full width shaving in pine, I had things set for thick shavings, and sure enough, last night I backed off the blade and the problem didn't quite go away, but got a LOT better. Clearly, that was my issue. Seems obvious after you pointed it out, but I was so enamored with thick shavings I didn't grok it at the time.
    As to sharpening, I do my primary on a Tormek, transfer to the Veritas jig, making sure I'm honing both tip and bottom of the hollow grind, then increase angle by a degree and work down to 8000. Works well, but I have no idea how much better it could get.

  13. #13
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    Elsewhere it was suggested to apply dilute shellac to a gnarly surface before planing. I haven't tried it, yet.

  14. #14
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    I gotta try that. How dilute?

    Also, I have to disagree that plane mouth makes no difference. I got a PM11 blade for an old Stanley #3; mouth was too narrow to take the wider blade, so I carefully opened it. I got so I could just barely see light between the blade and mouth front, and lucked into some amazing geometry that made it the best finish plane I've ever used. Only one thickness, and I only get 2-3 honings before blade jams the mouth, but for this one specific blade-chipbreaker-mouth geometry, it approaches a scraping plane in ability to handle difficult wood. I don't know what I did or how it all works, but it's become an amazing finishing plane. I have to believe the very narrow gap between the blade and mouth is a significant part of however this is working.
    Last edited by Josko Catipovic; 07-24-2020 at 6:57 AM.

  15. #15
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    Hmmm...
    July Project, 3 amigos.JPG
    All OEM irons...
    July Project, knotty..JPG
    Stanley No. 3, type 11, with the iron it was made with...
    July Project, to be fixed.JPG
    What the board was like before the planes worked it over.

    More about how one uses a plane, than who made it....

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