What's the best way to orient boards for glued up panel for hand planing?

[Bob Rankin]

I’m planing on cross-cutting a single narrow maple board into multiple pieces and glue them side by side to make a wider piece and I plan on using a handplane to to a final smoothing. After my maple workbench flattening I’d really like to learn what not to do in terms of alternating grain pattern !
Here is a poorly drawn picture of what I'm seeing in terms of grain pattern.

board1.jpg

If I look at the edge of the board the grain looks like what I've drawn, diagonal lines, you'll see this sometimes when you have cathedral patterns on the face but in this case I have none.
If I were handplaning this I'd want to plane in the direction I drew the arrow. Is that correct?

Now if I were to like one face over another and I flipped the board over face down and had the other face up and glued them edgewise the pattern would now be different. Diagonal lines going different directions on each piece. Does that mean alternating grain patterns = bad for handplane?

I've read it's good to flip every 2nd pice over to help against cupping - isn't this a bad idea for grain direction?

[Bob Rankin]

I have another spin on this, what if our jointed edges are a hair off ie. 89.95 degrees. This isn't something to worry about but if we're glueing up 10 pieces side by side this error will multiply into a big cupped piece too wide for any planer.

What if we flipped the boards in a way to compliment the error? We just flipped the grain pattern?
I've drawn another image where the sides are marked as before but the 89.95 side is colored orange, the other side (possibly 90?) is blue. We flipped lengthwise, then flipped over face side to get the two oranges to match up.

board2.jpg

[Chris Fournier]

I can't really make out the drawings that you've provided, to me it looks like you are trying to plane endgrain? If you are laying up a panel out of multiple pieces just keep tthe grain direction moving the same way in each piece of the lay up if at all possible. I pay much less attention to the face of the boards than I do to the edge grain. Keep the edge grain rising or falling in the same direction on all of your pieces and you'll be good. I pay very little attention to the up/down/up/down glue up theory. Most panels are restrained by some method or other and I put together a machinable aesthetically appealing panel first and foremost.

[Brian Kent]

Jumping over the question to the test if it will work. Once you get the pieces to the grain pattern and design you think will work, do a couple of plane passes in the direction each piece will be when assembled. If there is a good surface and no tear-out, it worked. I do this after planning grain direction just to make sure nothing tricky in the wood will trip me up.

[Harvey Pascoe]

Your drawings suggest to me that you are either planing across the grain (perpendicular) or on end grain. Which is it? I can only wonder why you'd do it that way. Why not reorient to go with the grain?

[Joe Angrisani]

I'm with Chris. The appearance of the panel is most important. There is no magic glue-up alignment method. Arrange the pieces so the panel looks best.

[Sean Hughto]

For something utilitarian, like a benchtop, use a block plane to determine the predominant (it can switch on a single board) grain direction, and orient all boards to facilitate tear-out free flattening.

For furniture - beauty is first, and you learn to deal with the flattening (better planing technique. high angle, scrapers .... belt sander ;-))

[Chris Fournier]

Belt sander! Sean! Pragmatic but repugnant. Ha!

[Sean Hughto]

I'm only half kidding. I have a shoe for my belt sander that tames the beast nicely and makes it easy to use with great finesse. I time or two I've run into tear out that resisted all efforts to the point where I was running out of thickness - belt sander to the rescue!

[Gary Pennington]

I have a shoe for my belt sander ...

Could you elaborate a bit on the shoe? I sure could use something like that, my experience with a belt sander has only created firewood.

[Sean Hughto]

MAKITA Sanding Shoe, 9903 Part No.193070-7

I have a Mkita 21x3 model 9903. It has a an accessory "shoe" - think of it as a frame or plate that mounts to the sander with an adjustment for depth. Like the sole of a handplane, the frame references the surface being sanded to aid in creating a flat surface. It also prevents tipping when going off edges and the like.

[Bob Rankin]

The drawing is the top view of the board, the colored part is the side. In most cases I work with maple and can't tell which way the grain is going so I'd have to label them before they get mixed up. I have dome planed to final thickness right now and if I take a test swipe and take a gouge out it'd be nasty to fix so I can't be wrong unless I tried with a scraper. I'd like to learn before testing.

[Sean Hughto]

For future reference is preferable to leave significant extra thickness on boards when gluing up panels so that you have material available for flattening after glue up.

Testing with a plane should not do significant damage if you set the plane for a very fine shaving and don't barrel through a vigorous swipe when you immediately meet resistance.

While there are rules of thumb about reading grain, they often are of little but the grossest form of help - a starting point - because the grain reverses or is difficult to see etc. Tips on reading grain are hard to decribe well in words - illustrations help. There are books addressing the subject or google for things like this:

http://www.woodshoptips.com/tips/052603/052603.pdf

[Jim Matthews]

The woodshotips link is comprehensive, and well illustrated.

I remember "plane into the valleys" to follow the grain. If you're planing entirely at a tangent to the tree's growth pattern, you'll have horrific tear-out, as the blade tries to lifts each successive layer in passing.

Have a look over at the Logan Cabinet Shoppe videos, the production value is basic and the delivery plain but the information is clearly presented.
In essence, you're trying to skim across a layer of tree fiber in a way that shears off the surface, rather than digging it out like a shovel.

Logan Cabinet Shoppe