Hey everyone,

I'm chamfering some walnut for the workbench tote project from Jim Tolpin's book, and I'm getting some nasty tearout when chamfering the long-edges. It's near the end of the project so it's very frustrating!

Here are some pictures:

tearout_1.jpg

tearout_2.jpg


tearout_3.jpg

tearout_4.jpg

I've tried creating the chamfers both with:
1) LN #60 1/2 low-angle block plane, sharpened at 30 degrees
2) LV low-angle (BU) shooting plane, sharpened at 35 degrees

Both planes give me long, thin, continuous shavings. Both skewing the plane & planing from either direction, I'm still getting tearout. I would say the smoothing plane is leaving a slightly better finish with less tearout.


I'm surprised I'm getting so much tearout when planing the faces & edges independently on these pieces gave me no problems. Not all the edges are problematic, but the edges that are problematic I noticed that the planing direction of the face & the edge independently were in opposite directions. Example:

tearout_5.jpg
red arrow: direction to plane edge (by reading face grain)
green arrow: direction to plane face (by reading edge grain)

So my guess is this may be the crux of the problem here.


So, two questions:

1) any suggestions to how to avoid this tearout to being with?

2) now that I am in this situation, what should I do - sand these chamfers with #180/#220-grit until the tearout is gone?



Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

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This post was somewhat similar: https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....amfering-edges

To summarize:
-read the grain
-if tearout, plane in opposite direction
-take a light cut
-skew the plane
-higher angles alleviate tearout