how to plane 'laminated quality wood'
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Dear All,
I’m currently buying pine stock from LeRoiMerlin (France) or DoIt (in Switzerland). They are fairly expensive … and low quality. Something what they call ‘laminated quality wood’ is in fact laminated from like 4cm stripes of wood. So a blank of 30cm wide is done from like 8 strips of wood full of knots and dips and cracks …
The worst is however, that apparently they laminate the wood such, that it is almost impossible to plane it by hand as the stripes are cladded in such way, that one of the stripes is e.g. planed with the grain and the other 4cm appart is going against the grain. I guess they do it because they want to avoid the wood bending and in addition they don’t really care as if it is machined later on, nobody cares.
My question is, how to plane such board using hand plane so it does not tear out …
thanks
david
11 November 2014 at 3:50 pm #120836Sounds horrible. I would look for better wood. All my local pine comes from New Zealand I think. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was available over there, they seem to be sending it all over the world these days. I know the USA have been importing it by the ship load as well.
11 November 2014 at 7:03 pm #120845The big box stores here sell the same Cr….
I would not spend the money for it. You can do better splitting down 2x4s. I have in fact split down construction lumber Its not half bad I can get cut offs 2 x4-6-8 for free 2 to 3 ft long.
I made a small wall cabnet a few weeks ago it loooks nice
FrankjSame here in Belgium. They actually call it carpenters timber. (Freely translated)
It’s too soft and uneven grained even to chop a chisel in. No matter how sharp it just tears out like hell.
Indeed planing it is a horrible experience and I know for a fact that scraping it isn’t working well either. The hard and knotty areas are too interspersed with fast growth wood that sheds off fibres just by looking at it.The thing that worries me is that so called quality furniture has the same makeup of small blocks randomly glued together. Last I saw a nice coffee table with a top that might just as well have been using those panels. Luckily for the owner it was in fact a hard wood but the appearance was similar.
If that’s the current design flow I certainly don’t want to be a part of it.Off to the drawing board to design something similar with real wood and real joints.
Diego
From what I heard, laminating is mainly to prevent twisting and bending of the wood and it does that quite well. Also, they can use smaller “scrap”-wood portions to construct the board. And it surely has something to do with standardization, at least here in Germany.
I used such kind of laminated wood to do a small table top. I planed it with a shallow setting IIRC and may have used a #80 cabinet scraper before sanding. Not much planing was necessary, since it is flat enough.
We have a massive beech table in the kitchen, which is about 2″ think and uses so called “Keilverzinkung” that is the strips are not flat but have a matching profile at the long grain (and maybe even at the end grain). Quite sturdy. I once used a disk sander to remove the top, but it took a lot of time and sanding disks due to the oil finish. A few weeks ago I used the #80 to remove the finish and some marks and colorations and it worked quite well for what little experience I have. With a cabinet scraper, you can work each strip at a time and figure out the grain direction independently. I was a bit in a hurry, otherwise, I may have taken greater care, as there are a few coarser sections – though it may also have to do with the finishing oil. More care and a bit more sanding might have helped.
David
Thanks to all these answers. It looks like I really have to change the wood provider. Problem here in Geneva/CH is, that I don’t know any company, where you can just walk in and choose the timber of your choice. The only two I have found are either corabois.ch (http://corabois.ch/liste_prix/2_bois_massif/1_bois_massif.php)
or getaz-miauton
(http://www.getaz-miauton.ch/f/catalog/pdf/Brochure%20bois%20massifs_2014_FR_ToWeb.pdf)Both of them are quite large companies, who do not allow their clients to walk in the stock and look around …
Maybe you could try to find a slightly further supplier. But then make sure you stock some wood, since it won’t be economical anymore to get just a few boards.
Alternatively you can check the cheapo hardware stores to see if they have some other timber. I remember Chris Schwarz explaining he always goes for the thickest and widest stock at the bottom of the pile. That is most likely to have dried without twist or bow. And as it’s too wide anyway, there is room to cut around bad sections and still have enough stock to make a usable part for your project. As a plus the price for the larger boards is usually lower than for the small boards.
Time to stock up.
Good luck
Diego13 November 2014 at 9:34 pm #120939No:80 scraper will not work very well on construction lumber or pine as a rule no:80 will work better in around the knots as knots more dense. Still worth a try if all else fails.
A very sharp plane very shallow cut close mouth will be best route on pine with different grain direction.
Do not be afraid to keep sharpening as soon as iron goes dull sharpen iron.
Have you any small independent builders yards near by they would have construction lumber and you may be surprised some may even have hardwood section which will probably only be Meranti or oak if lucky. That is usually the case in the UK.13 November 2014 at 10:09 pm #120942If you already have some boards, try planing them 90deg. to the grain direction. Shallow set, sharp blade, typically doesn’t leave a great surface but will get things flat and then you can finish with paper or scraper. Better that than not use them at all.
In the long-term, you probably do want to start with better quality wood.
I assumed the laminating was more to cut costs than for stability; it seems unlikely the manufacturer would go out of their way to inspect every stick and then orient them such that there was no net movement of the board.
Good luck,
Matt
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