Thicknessing Tiger Maple without a widebelt sander?

[Jim Underwood]

If you don't have a wide belt sander, how do you thickness highly figured wood like Tiger Maple?

And no, I don't want it "rustic"!

[Herr Dalbergia]

I use my Frommia planer / thickness planing machine. Carefully, light turns, and watch the direction, normally there is one direction where it works quite ok, sharp knives...but the final surface I would do with a sanding machine...

[Jerry Wright]

I use my DW735 planer with light passes and am able to start sanding with 150-180 grit orbital sander. Birdseye maple is tougher.

[john bateman]

Also, wetting the wood helps. Just brush on some water the last couple passes through the planer.

[Carl Beckett]

Funny, I was just helping out a fellow creeker this afternoon surface his workbench top of hard maple with some figure in it (beautiful wood!). Sharp jointer... some tearout. Sharp planer... some tearout. Sander (we tried three... a widebelt, a small widebelt, and a drum.. .but thats another story).

Have made several projects from hard maple and I have never found a way to prevent tearout with knives. Wetting the wood helps only a little. A good sharp handplane with the throat closed down is pretty good, up until the grain twists on you and a chunk comes out.

The other option is scraping (which isnt thicknessing). I have also worked a top flat once with a belt sander. Uggh!

Find someone with a sander is my advice.

[Jim Underwood]

If I can't borrow the one at work, I suppose I'll have to make an attachment for my mini-lathe. I probably need to do that anyway...

[Gordon Eyre]

I just dimensioned some hard maple and the boards that were figured had tear out on both the planer and jointer. I then adjusted them for just a very light pass and both machines produced a good surface on the same boards that had tear out previously. It took me longer but the results were good.

[Eddie Darby]

Also, wetting the wood helps. Just brush on some water the last couple passes through the planer.

Nice tip!
Another trick is to put the boards through your machine on an angle, so you are cutting more with the flames.
If you have a planer with non-disposable knives, you can use back bevels of a few degrees to help reduce tear-out. The back bevels only need to be thicker than the wood shavings you plan to take.

[Mike Konobeck]

Segmented head. Find someone with one and you shouldn't have a problem. You can always rent some time at a local cabinet shop that has one or a nice belt sander. I have a 4 blade jointer/planer and even with brand new knives and perfectly tuned (to my standards) I always get some tearout. I keep wanting to get a segmented head and will when I make it a priority.

If you have no other choice then you have to pay attention to the feed direction that minimizes tearout and feed at angle as much as possible as mentioned. Light passes help too. If you can adjust the speed of the head and/or feed rate then experiment to get a combination that is optimal.

[Bob Coleman]

You know, until I joined here and read the many posts on this same topic, I had never given a second thought to running highly figured boards over the jointer and through the planer. Not once have I had a tearout problem.

[Mel Fulks]

Bob,what kind of planer and cutters are you using?

[lowell holmes]

I run it through an original lunch box planer (Delta).

I spray the board with a light mist of water and take light cuts. Somtimes I have to touch it up with a high angle iron in my BU jack plane.

[Brett Robson]

I'd use your planer to get it close, stopping about 1/8" or so thicker than what you need. Then use a hand plane with a toothed blade to bring it down to the final thickness. Next use a smoother to remove the bulk of the ridges left by the toothed blade, but don't plane down into the solid wood. Finish with a card scraper and a light sanding. Easy peasey.

[Alan Bienlein]

I would just run it thru my Ridgid TP1300 planer. Ever since I swaped out the straight knife cutter head to the hekical one I've never looked back and even stopped worrying about grain orientation.

[Jeff Monson]

I have best luck with my L/N #8 smoother. I have had little luck with straight knives on a planer.