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Thread: How to read grain direction?

  1. #31
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    Let me have some fun with this dire and final statement of "?fact?".
    Ignoring the chatoyance for now. Chances are, unless one has a very prize flitch rather than, what most of us work with, a random pile of planks from various trees, one is going to have changes in chatoyance even if one holds their tung just right.

    It is a good practice to make sure when gluing up boards to make a wide plank,that all the boards plane in the same direction.
    Good practice but often a boring, uninspired or down right annoying visual effect may result however. As in "oh look you can see right where the seams are. Looks like a bunch of random boards glue edge to edge".

    "Oh but isn't the chatoyance even ?!"

    If you do not do this,
    of course
    you'll have trouble planing the whole plank
    If using a flexy bevel down and especially with a non perfected chip breaker and even then good luck and go to it.

    Unless of course
    you were to switch mid stream to a good basic bevel up plane following Winton's sharpening "ridiculousness " to the letter.

    then of course

    all would be well, you could lay out the boards for best grain camouflage of the glue joints and inspired playfulness of the imagination stimulating effect of the grain and no tear out would result except from the cross plaining scrub flattening and all that would be progressively cleaned up while planing straight down the panel's length.

    But also,there will be a different chatoyance(shine) seen between those different boards when a finish is applied.
    But then of course there are those who use the chatoyance as a design element to create checker board patterns etc.

    They would either have to resort to Winton's "ridiculousness" or bussssout the belt sander.

    What ever that is.

    PS: Ok I lied
    I didn't ignore the chatoyance.
    Last edited by Winton Applegate; 09-06-2014 at 11:36 PM.
    Sharpening is Facetating.
    Good enough is good enough
    But
    Better is Better.

  2. #32
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    Good advice here. Please let me pose a slightly different situation. Yesterday I was edge planing a curly maple board to make its width equal to the others. It was about 1/32" wider (it was a total Neander build, rather than using my tablesaw). The grain reversed itself in the 3' of its length. So, if I was finsh face planing, I would use a #4 with a real sharp blade and a tight set chip breaker and plane in one direction to get a 0.001" to 0.002" shaving. Problem solved.

    But yesterday I wanted to plane to size quickly rather than take it down with one thousandth of an inch cuts. So grabbing a jack plane, I took a thicker shaving and suffered the tearout at one end of the board. When I got close to the proper thickness, I switched to a smoother to clean up the tearout at one end where the grain reversed. I could have also backed off the blade and reversed the planing direction at the troublesome end. Is this the way others do this? Is there a better way?
    Shawn

    "no trees were harmed in the creation of this message, however some electrons were temporarily inconvenienced."

    "I resent having to use my brain to do your thinking"

  3. #33
    Did you set the capiron on the jackplane too? As close as possible without it peeking out under the sole? You won't totally prevent tearout, but it helps to keep the damage in check. Thick shavings on difficult wood make it almost impossible to alltogether avoid tearout. On wider boards it helps to traverse, but on a narrow edge that's not possible. Going in from both sides isn't a stupid idea either, but it is more work.

  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shawn Pixley View Post
    Good advice here. Please let me pose a slightly different situation. Yesterday I was edge planing a curly maple board to make its width equal to the others. It was about 1/32" wider (it was a total Neander build, rather than using my tablesaw). The grain reversed itself in the 3' of its length. So, if I was finsh face planing, I would use a #4 with a real sharp blade and a tight set chip breaker and plane in one direction to get a 0.001" to 0.002" shaving. Problem solved.

    But yesterday I wanted to plane to size quickly rather than take it down with one thousandth of an inch cuts. So grabbing a jack plane, I took a thicker shaving and suffered the tearout at one end of the board. When I got close to the proper thickness, I switched to a smoother to clean up the tearout at one end where the grain reversed. I could have also backed off the blade and reversed the planing direction at the troublesome end. Is this the way others do this? Is there a better way?
    Yes, I would go with the tablesaw

  5. #35
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    Winton,why do you choose to ignore the now well proven (revived from old knowledge) use of the chip breaker? If you look at the angles of the bevel,and the angles of the back of the plane iron,comparing both the standard Bailey type plane,and the bevel up types,you will see that in reality there is hardly any difference in the angles at which the cutters enter the wood. That is,unless you grind a very long bevel. But,that might lead to other problems,like chipping. How can you ignore the now well known Japanese videos ? They show and prove the effectiveness of a properly set chip breaker,seen on an extreme closeup of the cutting action,and the tear out resisting action of the close set chip breaker.

    As for unwanted chatoyance,it is very obvious on guitars whose spruce tops have different grain angle on each side,though they were book matched. Such is wood cut from a twisted tree trunk. One side shines quite brightly. The other half looks dark. That is a situation where you do not want different chatoyance to show.

    Nor do I want it to show in the wide dining table I made recently. I want all the glued up wide boards to look the same.

    If you want to take advantage of grain shine for some decorative purpose,that's fine. But,most of the time we want to eliminate boards showing different chatoyance.

    Usually,if you search long and deep enough, or gradually learn enough,you will find that there is a good reason why,at least in the old days of craftsmanship,some designs prevailed. Like the standard bevel down Bailey style planes. And why the prevalent style of planes are not the bevel up types. That knowledge seemed to have become lost in the onset of the machine age. Now,it is regained.

    It's just like Mother Nature,in the end: Survival of the fittest. These days,it does not seem to hold so true(in craftsmanship) as it once did. Men once widely knew how to use hand tools to earn a living. That included not tearing up grain and taking more time to fix it. They barely earned enough to buy food on the way home. And I can give specific examples of that if needed. You cannot even get a decent chasing hammer handle(or head). You have trouble finding a decent file. And then are come all the new "boutique" tool makers. Some of them revive rarely made old patterns.

    If you choose to ignore my advice,that is your privilege. but,please do not poke fun at it. It was well and hard earned.

    BTW: Do you refer to tung oil,or holding your tongue just right?
    Last edited by george wilson; 09-07-2014 at 6:46 PM.

  6. #36
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    There is a limit to thickness you can take with a cap iron set really close (at least for me).
    Shawn

    "no trees were harmed in the creation of this message, however some electrons were temporarily inconvenienced."

    "I resent having to use my brain to do your thinking"

  7. #37
    When you want to know everything about shaving thickness and chipbreaker settings compared to high angle blades and tight mouths, you should of course read my article!
    http://planetuning.infillplane.com/h...s_van_der.html

    When working difficult wood there is of course a limit to the shaving thickness you can achieve without tearout. And the chipbreaker limits the shaving thickness indeed. When the chipbreaker starts to peek out under the sole, the force to push the plane will increase rapidly. But you have plenty of space usually. At a 0.1 mm setting, you can go to a 0.07 mm cutting depth (0.1 x sin 45). That is about 3 thou, plenty for a smoother setting like that.

    Cutting depth is usually quite a bit less then shaving thickness, because the shaving is compressed during planing. In my experience a 3 thou cutting depth easilly yields a 4 thou shaving.

    Ok, so far for the geeky stuff

  8. #38
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    Winton,why do you choose to ignore the now well proven (revived from old knowledge) use of the chip breaker?
    I would use a #4 with a real sharp blade and a tight set chip breaker and plane in one direction to get a 0.001" to 0.002" shaving. Problem solved.
    grabbing a jack plane, I took a thicker shaving and suffered the tear out at one end of the board. When I got close to the proper thickness, I switched to a smoother to clean up the tear out at one end where the grain reversed. I could have also backed off the blade and reversed the planing direction at the troublesome end. Is this the way others do this?
    Is there a better way?
    George,
    it is like you read my posts and don't need to and Shawn needs to read my posts and doesn't.
    If I had taken the BU down that edge I could have taken a heavy cut and gotten almost no tear out, then backed way off on the thickness of cut taken and finish planed it and or even switched blades and finish planed it, much quicker and easier than a BD and been sitting and picking my teeth while all the BD action was still going on.

    THAT IS WHY !
    As I think I have said before. Don't say "it CAN'T be done" or "you will OF COURSE have trouble with".
    Say "I choose to limit myself to these funny BD planes and so I put up with ______" fill in the blank.
    There is a an option that CAN do it and is really no TROUBLE.

    spelling is off limits, you know that. Besides my industrial, extra heavy duty, water cooled spell checker was down for its quarterly complete over haul. I was relying on a team of spelling bee winners but they couldn't keep up and some couldn't stop laughing long enough to tell me what I should type.

    so of course there are going to be errors. Spelling bores the absolute badjesus out of me when I am trying to write ideas. I think it was Hemingway who said "That is why there are editors". Thanks for being my editor. I will send you your fee just as soon as the royalties from this start pooring, I mean poring, I mean pouring . . .

    . . . what was I talking about ? Oh well . . . it's gone now.

    Speaking of tong oyl check out this photo taken today of the oils from the other thread. The tung hasn't frosted over though it has set for like two weeks in open warm air. It is 100 % and a couple three years ago would have frosted over and began to solidify by now EVEN THE THICK DROP not just the smear. How is this possible ? I thought the problem was keeping this goop from solidifying in the jar. The stand oil has thickened but not cross linking nearly as fast as I have seen it do in similar tests I have performed with it.

    PPS: I keep the tung oil in jars that large marbles are added to to keep them full to the lid so very little air is in there.
    PS: the camellia and the WD-40 haven't "evaporated" yet either but I have faith that they will . . . eventually . . . I was assured that they would/will/have already done so in the future.

    What do you make of that ?
    And since I have you on the line, what do you say about the himephrodite dividers and the last monkey wrench I posted.

    yah I couldn't spell himephrodite and am too lazy to look it up.

    I would have like to have heard back from you there but short of send you a PM I finally gave up asking.
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    Last edited by Winton Applegate; 09-08-2014 at 4:56 AM.
    Sharpening is Facetating.
    Good enough is good enough
    But
    Better is Better.

  9. #39
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    I had a nice LN bevel up plane at work,and it worked fine. Been too parsimonious to spend the bucks to but one for home. I know that LV thinks chip breakers are too difficult to set correctly. They have a point,but like everything else,it takes some skill and finesse. Perhaps that is why they might prefer to avoid it for the average hobby woodworker. Never the less,the properly set chip breaker works. I was not aware of this until David W. brought it to light. I won't be too stubborn to refuse new knowledge. Besides,that Japanese video does prove it very convincingly.

    Since many musical instruments are made of curly maple,I just used to plane straight across the grain,and scrape smooth.

    Winton,I have enjoyed your posts,and will keep on reading them.

    P.S.: I think I replied that your wrench is not a true monkey wrench. I don't have one myself,though they are apparently good wrenches.when I was new at the museum,the ordering clerk pulled out a monkey wrench and asked me what it was. I replied correctly,thinking that the old man needed to find something better to try being tricky at!! There's one on Leach's tool list,but it's too ugly to contemplate buying. I will struggle on with my ever loosening Crescent wrench,when I'm too lazy to locate a proper open end wrench. I had an 18th. C. repro wrench at work,for taking the fire engine apart while in costume. It had a captured steel wedge to whack tight when it was adjusted. That was the greatest wrench I ever had. It never budged at all,once the wedge was given a whack. I wish I still had it. But,my need for wrenches is confined to lathes and milling machines,so it would perhaps been a bit bulky.

    As for the hemaphrodite calipers,I can't recall them right off. I think they were o.k.. Old time machinists called them "morphies". But,as I mentioned,the very greatest part of them just filed one leg of regular dividers a bit short and they did fine double duty. Many years ago,when I was a kid,finding those filed short irritated me a bit. Then I learned why they were so filed.
    Last edited by george wilson; 09-08-2014 at 9:19 AM.

  10. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Shawn Pixley View Post
    There is a limit to thickness you can take with a cap iron set really close (at least for me).
    Shawn, a tweener plane is nice to have and makes fast work of thicknessing. The thickest shavings I take from my smoother are about 5 thousandths, and from a try plane almost twice that, though it's nicer to work a shaving a bit thinner than a hundredth - it's just something you can do if you feel the desire. (speaking in soft maple / cherry hardness type woods).

    And you can take those heavy shavings with the shaving just being worked a little by the cap iron (so that it straightens some), so you have protection against catastrophic tearout, though you get a little bit at the higher thicknesses. The key to the whole thing is that the tearout that occurs with those slightly farther settings with a thick shaving is very minimal and you just set your smoother for a thin shaving and run it off without changing thickness much.

    What I'm getting at is that the setting that you're looking for here is probably the most useful task for the cap iron, as you can smooth any way you want, but taking a shaving between 5 thousandths and a hundredth and getting rid of damage or ridges from a very coarse plane is very useful for thicknessing. It is the part of the equation that allows quick dimensioning by hand, working to your marking line with shavings 5 thousandths to a hundredth thick instead of a thousandth or two.

    So my suggestion would be with another smoother, or a 5 or really any other plane with a good cap iron, experiment to find a setting where a five thousandth shaving is just straightening with the cap iron. I think you'll find you can remove material fast like that without much strain, leave a very good surface that has only tiny tearout that's easily taken off by two or three smoother passes, and generally stay completely out of trouble.

    You may also be able to (in most woods) use that five thou setting on a smoother and back off for final smoothing without changing the setting since 1 thousandth type shavings often don't have enough strength to lift anything from the surface of the wood.
    Last edited by David Weaver; 09-08-2014 at 10:46 AM.

  11. #41
    Thanks to the pro's on this thread; I've really enjoyed this lively yet professional debate.

  12. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by david charlesworth View Post
    Dave,

    ....

    I like to preserve planing directions to the end of the job.

    David Charlesworth
    Am i correct in thinking:
    • grain direction varies, and the "best" direction is often somewhat arbitrary
    • but that once you've chosen a direction, you continue in that direction


    Once you've planed the board and moved on to other boards, some assembly, etc., do you often need to plane that board again? And if so, do you mark the direction you had chosen originally?
    Doug, the "Wood Loon"
    Acton, MA

    72, slow road cyclist, woodworking dabbler, tool junkie , and
    bonsai enthusiast.
    Now, if I could just stay focused longer than a few weeks...

  13. #43
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    There are many here more knowledgeable than I but here's my take.

    The best grain direction is not arbitrary so much as often changes. One must read the direction and the make decision about how to plane it. Sometimes, I can work in a single direction and get acceptable results despite the grain switching, some times it's better to plane different parts in different directions, sometimes no planing direction seems to work, so I reach for a scraper or sandpaper. Occasionally, I reach for a different piece of wood.

    This is the nature of working with wood, especially when using hand tools. I take what the wood gives me and respond as best I can.

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Hobkirk View Post
    Am i correct in thinking:
    • grain direction varies, and the "best" direction is often somewhat arbitrary
    • but that once you've chosen a direction, you continue in that direction


    Once you've planed the board and moved on to other boards, some assembly, etc., do you often need to plane that board again? And if so, do you mark the direction you had chosen originally?
    -- Dan Rode

    "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

  14. #44
    Yes, I am careful to preserve the planing direction of Face Side and Face edge.

    You may plane again for a number of reasons.

    1. Joining planks.
    2. Flushing joints such as door frames. Leg to rail joints etc.
    3. Perhaps the most important, when you want to clean a panel or component before glue up or final finishing.
    4. Fitting doors and drawers. I'm sure there are many more!

    David Charlesworth

  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Winton Applegate View Post
    George,
    it is like you read my posts and don't need to and Shawn needs to read my posts and doesn't.
    Winton, I wasn't asking how to do it, only surveying how others might do it. I got a square, straight edge with no tearout in a reasonable amount of time. I was only interested in how others did it. If you are suggesting that I need to do it your way, well, thanks for playing. I really don't need you to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing. It is the height of arrogance to think that your way is the only way.
    Last edited by Shawn Pixley; 09-08-2014 at 8:04 PM.
    Shawn

    "no trees were harmed in the creation of this message, however some electrons were temporarily inconvenienced."

    "I resent having to use my brain to do your thinking"

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