Curly Maple Concern

[Matt Wolboldt]

Hey everyone. I managed scrounge up some 8/4 curly maple. I've never dealt with any highly figured wood up to this point and I'm concerned about tearout, i.e. how can I minimize it.
Cheers,
Matt

[Paul Girouard]

Hey everyone. I managed scrounge up some 8/4 curly maple. I've never dealt with any highly figured wood up to this point and I'm concerned about tearout, i.e. how can I minimize it.
Cheers,
Matt

Sharp tools , light cuts with same sharp tools , if you have a wide belt sander or can rent some time on one they work well. Card scrapers also work.

So it depends how your tooled up for work, are you a mostly hand tool guy, or a power tool guy? So this advise is pretty general , sharp tools and light cuts pretty much sums it up.

[Jason Beam]

Yep - light light LIGHT cuts - we're talking gnat hair light .. and even then with machinery you may still get some tears.

Some guys advocate spraying the surface with water before sending it through machines. Never tried it myself, but I've found that sanding was much easier than wincing at the sound of a chunk splitting out in my planer. So I tend to hand-tool it as much as possible.

When hand planing, SHARP SHARP SHARP is your motto. Same with light cuts - in the area of .001-.003" shavings. The slotted plane blade seems to be gaining popularity for really viable insurance, too.

[Larry Fox]

As others have said - light, light cuts with very sharp tools. I also leave a little more length on the pieces that I normally otherwise would when jointing and planing. That way, if you do have the extreme displeasure of hearing a chunk tear out of the end of the board you can take it off..

[willie sobat]

Sharp and light as everyone else has recommended. I do use water on tear-out prone woods before I send it through the last few passes. It works reasonably well, but it will not make up for dull tools or aggressive planing. Wet the surface lightly and evenly before sending it through.

[Jeff Booth]

I agree, light cuts with sharp tools. I plane to close thickness, then take very light cuts then ........ I just bite the bullet and finish up with some serious card scraping.

Jeff

[Jim Becker]

If you are milling on machines, it's also a good practice to send the material through skewed a few degrees to give a more shearing cut. This reduces tear-out in many cases. Yet another reason to support wider machine capacities!

[glenn bradley]

Sounds like we have the sharp and light and skewed areas covered. The water trick is solid advice. You may also want to factor something else in. You don't say how large your board is but a decent piece of CM around here could be $50 for not-so-very-much in board feet. I'd use this as an excuse to pick up a spare set of planer knives or take a trip to the sharpening shop. You'll have sharp cutters for your project and a spare set from now on. Beats tanking an expensive piece of material.

[Matt Wolboldt]

Thanks everyone for the advice.

[Dick Strauss]

Matt,
All of this advice is good but...even sharp blades/water tricks will not work on certain very curly hard maple (I know because I tried them all). My buddy's Delta DJ20 8" joiner and Delta 15" planer (both with fresh blades) had tearout issues with my batch of very curly hard maple. I finally had to use a neighbor's Woodmaster planer that has adjustable feedrate for the job. I think Jet/Grizzly/Shop Fox also make planer/moulding machines with variable speeds. The slower feedrates made all of the difference in the world though it did make for long days of planing for several hundred bf of wood. Cabinet scrapers also work great but I had too much to do by hand.

You can try it on your own. Your maple has a nice figure to it and is very nice wood. If it doesn't work well, you can always hire someone to do the joining/planing for you.

Good luck,
Dick