Any hint to avoid tearout in walnut?
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Hi All,
I have a very nice piece (A+ grade?) of walnut, which I have started to process today. The wood seems to have a very nice and reasonably straight grain. But no matter what I do, there is a spot, which when I plane it, it looks like going against the grain or into an end grain, and it tears out. No matter what I did so far – I have used standard angle 4 1/2 plane, low angle lie nielsen 62 – it always finishes on this spot as a tear out. I have been playing with the mouth opening, but it does not seem to have any effect. I believe that both planes I’ve used were sharp.
Is there any magic I could do to avoid this tearout?
Interesting enough, planing just the other side (90 degrees to the one which tears out) the wood planes just perfectly.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.27 May 2015 at 1:57 am #127334Have you tried a scraper? A #80 will probably fix that in a few swipes.
27 May 2015 at 11:36 am #127347If you have been using the planing technique of VERY sharp (blade) and VERY thin (shavings) and you still get tear out then I agree with WW435 to use a scraper. There is just some wood that will not cooperate with a hand plane.
That is a nice piece of wood by the way…
A swipe of the oil pad on the plane sole can sometimes help a little, but I think in this case a #80 or card scraper is probably the way to go…
https://paulsellers.com/2011/10/recycling-4oz-bean-or-tomato-tins/
29 May 2015 at 11:52 am #127380One other little trick that you may find handy (when used in combination with a freshly sharpened and set plane that is only taking a very fine shaving) is to compress some shavings into the mouth from the top of the plane whilst planing using your thumb.
You could also try a York Pitch as Paul discusses here: http://paulsellers.com/2014/11/questions-answered-york-pitch-only-answers-one-problem/
That’s just to give you some options. Otherwise I would go for the No 80 as the others mentioned.
Best,
Phil29 May 2015 at 2:59 pm #127381First off, I agree with the comments on the use of a scraper. I reach for my card scraper when I can’t control tear-out using just my plane. I’ve never been disappointed.
A couple of thoughts on the pitch and types of planes you’re using. First off, unless you’ve ground/honed a higher than usual bevel on the blade of your low angle plane, I wouldn’t expect it to perform well in the situation you describe (at least that’s my personal experience using planes similar – and maybe even identical – to yours). I assume your low-angle blade has a bevel angle between 25-30 degrees. That puts the cutting angle of the plane between 37 and 42 degrees (bevel angle + bedding angle). In my experience, tear-out is worse at those angles. You might, however, be able to improve your results by honing a steeper micro-bevel on your low angle blade. For example, if you honed a 40 degree micro bevel on that blade, you’d get a plane with a cutting angle of 52 degrees (12 degree bedding angle of the low angle plane + 40 (micro) bevel of the blade). That’s between York (50) and Middle (55) pitch. With thin shavings and a finely set mouth, that has the potential to give you very good results. Note that you could also achieve the same cutting angle by honing a 10 degree back-bevel (a bevel on the FLAT side) on the iron of your standard angle 4 1/2. That would give you the equivalent of a middle pitch plane (45 degree bedding angle + 10 back bevel). If you do that, be sure to adjust the frog so that it fully supports the iron (NO gap between the iron and the bed of the frog) AND set your chip breaker further AWAY from the cutting edge of the blade than you normally would. In my experience 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch should do it. You need to do that so that the chip breaker isn’t resting on the back bevel you honed and doesn’t block the shavings coming off the wood at a higher than usual angle.
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