Plane for smoothing tricky grain...

[David Gendron]

Goodday every one, I would like to purchass a smoothing plane for dificult graine wood(I know an other "witch plane should I buy" tread...). I would love to be abble to afford a Brese or Sauer smoother but:rolleyes:... Maybe one day;)! So for now I was looking into the LV BU large smoother and the LN 41/2 with one of the hight angle frog. I already have a LV BU jointer that use the same blades as the smoother... I would love to know what are theexperiences around the creek with these planes( I know I will have a lot of different oppinions:confused:)
Thank you!
David

[Tri Hoang]

As long as you are looking at the bevel-up family, I would recommend the BU smoother. The balance is excellent on these and it shares irons with other BU planes.

For very difficult grains, I would use a card scraper for smoothing. A scraper holder would help if you have a lot to scrape. IMO, planes are sexy but the lowly scraper is just as effective and cheap.

[Eddie Darby]

If you are already familiar with the BU approach, and it works for you, then I would stick with it. Just buy some extra blades, so you can have a couple of different pitches, and if need be, you can sharpen a blade to act as a scraper.

-Fresh very sharp blade.
-Steep angles
-Keep the mouth opening tight.
-Take very thin shavings.
-Wax the sole of the plane. Just a few squiggles of Paraffin wax should do the trick
-Skew the plane to favor the flame.
-Wet the grain lightly, if need be. Some use a solvent for this, but I have not. Just make sure to dry your metal surfaces.

Then if that all fails, go to a scraper action, which is as steep as it gets.

[David Dalzell]

If you haven't already done so check out Derek Cohen's site www.inthewoodshop.com (http://www.inthewoodshop.com) He has an extensive and rigorous review of the Veritas BUS. He tested it side-by-side with several other dedicated smoothers on some very difficult wood. He rates it very highly.

[Jim Koepke]

All the replies so far offer good points.

For tricky grain, my experience is that a #4-1/2 is not the plane to use. I find a smaller maneuverable plane like a #1, 2 or 3 works better. YMMV

It allows for turning the plane to follow the grain.

A scrapper may actually be a better option.

If all else fails, try sand paper. Especially in soft woods, I have been working some red cedar that is driving me nuts. It seems a sneeze can scratch that stuff.

jtk

[David Keller NC]

David - You don't mention what you mean by "tricky grain". If you mean something with a high variability of the grain pitch (such as tiger maple), I might recommend something different than for wood like honduras rosewood where the grain's reasonably regular for a few inches, then reverses suddenly.

If you mean something like figured maple, cherry, walnut, etc..., you may want to go with a toothed blade. Along with transverse planing, this option is absolutely guaranteed not to tear out big chunks, while still allowing a reasonable amount of planing force. This is in contrast to a high-angle pitch to the blade, whether BU or BD (with a high angle frog or a back bevel), where there's a significant increase in force required to push the plane.

You can get a toothed blade for either the LN 4-1/2 or the LN 164 (BU smoother) - I am not sure about LV's offerings. After leveling the surface with the toothed blade, one then generally finishes up with very light cuts and a very sharp (non-toothed) blade, or a scraper plane.

As I'm sure you're aware, there isn't really any advantage/disadvantage to a BU versus a BD plane - you can vary the pitch of the blade in either. A BU plane typically has a much lower center of gravity, which some users like. A BD plane (at least the LN Stanley copies) allows blade extension adjustment on the planing stroke, which some users (me included) prefer.

Whether you wish to deal with changing blades out to avoid buying multiple planes is also a personal preference. I find doing that in the middle of a project very irritating, so I sold my BU smoother and just have a couple of BD smoothers with different frog angles and back bevels.

The one thing that a BU plane will do that a BD plane does not do well is planing end grain (that was, by the way, the original purpose of the Stanley BU designs). In my own case, I don't plane end-grain on an assembled piece - I use a shooting board and a dedicated miter plane for this purpose.

[Richard Dooling]

LV's scraper plane has an optional toothed blade. I have worked with it a little and it seems to do very well on difficult areas including knots. It is a very thick heavy blade:

"Also available is a 1/8" (0.125") thick A2 tool steel toothed blade with V-shaped teeth at 25 teeth per inch."

I should mention that this is their large scraper since they have just introduced a small scraper.

[David Gendron]

David K, I'm working on some birds eye maple.

[David Gendron]

Thank you every one for the tips. I do have a few BD smoother like a stanley#3 and 4 and a LV #4(that I don't realy like... anyway, not as much as my stanleys...) and do have a sraping plane and card scraper:rolleyes:. So maybe I'm fine:D, just have to tune them up bether!!
thank you again.

[David Keller NC]

"David K, I'm working on some birds eye maple."

I think most here would advise a scraper or a scraper plane. BE maple is one of the more difficult woods to work with a plane - the BE have a disturbign tendency to pop out of their sockets when worked with a blade - be it on a hand tool or a powered planer. Most power tool pros that I know that regularly use it don't put a blade to it - they run it through a wide-belt or drum sander.

One trick I can report that works well with this wood is to give it a wash-coat of shellac before finish planing it. The shellac helps to glue down some of the wild grain adjacent to the bird's eyes, which are essentially just tiny knots (and lots of them!).

[Doug Shepard]

... I would love to be abble to afford a Brese or Sauer smoother but:rolleyes:... Maybe one day;)! ....

It looks like Ron Brese finally has the larger smoothers available in kit form which might put one within reach. He only has the small smoother kit pricing showing up on his site so far but Jameel Abraham did a great blog writeup on building one
http://oudluthier.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

I've planed wood with my Brese from both directions and still couldn't tell which way the grain on the wood was running. I also got a significant improvement from my LN #4 after changing to the high angle frog but it's not quite as grain-direction ignorant as the Brese.

[Glen Evans]

Don't overlook this one: Lee Valley's Hong Kong style 60 degree bed angle with HSS blade item number 07P1270. Even though I now make my own planes--I'll still pull this out for polishing tough grain. I was absolutely shocked at the performance for the price. The blade was easy to lap and holds an edge well--bedding was very solid and I had no chatter

Good luck

Glen

[David Gendron]

Tahnk you David K for the Shalac trick.
Doug, If I had a little more time, I would consider a kit, I already have a kit from legacy plane before they closed and it's still siting on the shelf...
Glen, I had a look at this plane, it look realy similar to the HNT Gordon plane are they a copy of each other? Thank you.
David

[Glen Evans]

They do look identical don't they? I think the Lee Valley are the Munjifeng (sp?) unit talked about so much a couple of years ago when they tested comparable to super high-end planes. I think its a great plane. On all my planes I install grub screws to make blade alignment easier--those would be a great after market addition for this one as well--but it works great just as it is.

Good luck
Glen