Spalted maple blunting plane iron, any ideas?

[Will Brauneis]

Hey everyone,
I have a nice piece of spalted western maple with some fiddle back figure in the parts that haven't been eaten by the fungus that i want to veneer to the lid of a humidor I'm making, simple right? Except after about 10 strokes with my hand plane it would barely cut any more. So i took the iron out to inspect it and the edge looked like i had run it over sand paper as it had little tiny nicks in it. I was thinking maybe it got dropped at the mill and had dirt ground into it or something so i sharpened the blade and tried again. I managed to get the board flat but with the same results to the plane iron. I then tried to cut the veneer and my band saw didn't even want to cut this stuff (with a very sharp almost new resaw blade)it took alot of force to get it through. I then sharpened the iron again and tried to smooth the sawn face of the board and once again it chewed my iron up. I have no idea why or what caused this to become the hardest piece of rotten wood in the world. I'm really puzzled over this so i thought i would see what you guys think of it? could it be something the fungus made that is blunting to blade? or maybe the tree sucked up a lot of minerals or silt or something? any insight would be much appreciated

Oh and one more question. for the veneer would hide glue be a good choice or should i go with a different glue? I'm afraid of the high humidity in the humidor affecting the glue bond, would this be and issue?

Thanks

[Erik Manchester]

Will,

I have made a number of humidors using hardwood veneer over spanish cedar and have used Titebond III without ever having an issue with glue failure. It is waterproof and has held up very well for me.

I cannot help you with the blade wear issue other than to suggest that an A2 steel blade at greater than 45 deg might be called for in this instance. Maple can get very hard.

Good luck,

Erik

[Jeff Willard]

The humidity inside the humidor,IIRC, should ideally be about 70%. I would think that hide glue would be able to handle that.

[Roger Bell]

I haven't handplaned planed spalted BL maple, but I have turned quite a bit of it.

It takes frequent and almost incessant tool sharpening to produce reasonable results in spalted maple, as you need exceptional keenness to effectively cut the spongy corpse of the wood without excessive tearout. That's why some guys chemically treat the wood to give it some body before working.

I don't think that any other "natural" factors such as the fungus activity would have an effect. And while there are minerals often associated with the spalting in BLM ("mineral streaking"), I doubt that the mineral concentrations are enough to dull an edge. But the question is intriguing. So I will ask a plant pathologist specializing in NW woods this question tomorrow and if I get an interesting answer, I will re-post.

[David Christopher]

Will, maybe one of the creekers with a carbide blade would resaw it for you. I have a resaw king blade and would be willing to try and cut it for you but I live a long ways away

[Brian Kent]

What kind of plane is it, Will?

[David Gendron]

I realy think that the mineral are for something, in the dulling of the plane iron... but for the resawing of it I don't know??

[Bob Barkto]

I was just perusing some related research and came across an interesting study on conservation of wood and finished wood products done by researchers at the Smithsonian.
Their tests concluded that wood items joined with hide glue be kept in the range of 30% - 60% RH. Beyond 60% the strength falls off very rapidly. At 70% it fails under very light stress.

At levels lower than ~30% the strength inreased dramatically, but this is hard on the wood and any other items that might be associated, like visitors to an exhibit! At 30% RH strength was more than adequate for normal use.

Just something to consider.

Oh and one more question. for the veneer would hide glue be a good choice or should i go with a different glue? I'm afraid of the high humidity in the humidor affecting the glue bond, would this be and issue?

Thanks

[Will Brauneis]

Thanks for the input guys ill probably go with water proof tight bond then.

As for the planes they are a 5 1/2 Stanley and my # 4 Stanley smoother.( i tried both just to make sure it wasn't just the one iron) They still have the original irons in them but it holds up well when planing hard exotics so I'm just confused as to why a piece of spalted maple destroys the edge. When its sharp it cuts the maple just fine with no tear out but soon after the the edge is gone. I'm guessing it could be the environment the tree grew in that is causing this or it is just and extremely dense and hard piece of maple even after spalting. I will probably order replacement irons but Hock doesn't seem to make a 2 1/4" only 2 3/8" A2 steel blade which doesn't fit the old type9 5 1/2 but i found a 2 1/4" D2 blade made by Ray Iles at (toolsforwoodworking.com) which is apparently even harder than A2. Any one have experience using D2 steel and how it preforms?

Thanks David for the resawing offer but i did get the veneer cut it just took some effort to get it through the blade. Its a fairly new Timber Wolf 1" resaw blade so i was surprised at the difficulty it had.

I'm interested to hear what your friend has to say roger hopefully he will have some insight on it. If not i guess we can just add it to the list of strange and perplexing things wood can do.

[Sam Takeuchi]

If you get Iles D2, most likely you'll have to file the mouth wide open. Lie Nielsen has a replacement 2-1/4" A2 blade. It should fit straight in unless if you happen to have one of those really tight mouthed planes.

As for your maple, maybe there's sand or silica loaded up there. If it's only on the surface, maybe you can saw or cut past it?

[Robert Rozaieski]

Any one have experience using D2 steel and how it preforms?

I have no experience with the D2 plane irons but the Ray Iles mortise chisels are D2 as well. Once sharp, they hold their edge an incredibly long time, but they do take more effort to get super sharp than standard O1. If you hollow grind and then hone you should not notice a significant increase in honing time. However, if you try to hone the entire bevel, you could be at it awhile. On my mortise chisels, the main bevel is 20° with a secondary bevel of about 35° so honing isn't too bad since the 35° bevel is small. I wouldn't want to hone the entire bevel of those chisels though. The steel is definitely much tougher than O1.

[Ron Hock]

I know little about spalting but that it requires 20% moisture content for the fungi to grow. Is it possible that the log was laying on wet soil and absorbed some minerals along with the water and fungi? Damage to tools that you describe sounds like that caused by heavily mineralized wood.

[Roger Benton]

Okay this explains a lot. I just go done planing a med sized (16" x 38") panel of spalted poplar and can't believe what's going on with my irons- they look like they've been attacked with p150 sandpaper. I always 'figured' spalted wood was softer than the same species without the fungus but the theory about the mineral content seems key here. Interesting, to say the least.

[Will Brauneis]

Thanks for your responses everyone you have been very helpful. I'm guessing it must have become mineralized then and that's what is damaging my plane irons. I'll just add a better blade to my Christmas list

Happy holidays!