Milling Gnarly Wood

[Julie Moriarty]

I'm working with African mahogany that I believe is probably sapwood. I bought it because it has beautiful figure. I've worked with it only once before and knew what I was getting into. It hates planing of any sort. Some of the wood fuzzes up even when ripping.

The wood will be used to frame mirrors in two of our bathrooms. This is the profile I'm going for (hatched area still needs removing):
I used a drum sander to get all the boards to 3/4" thick. Then I ripped the bevel on all the boards. Some of them are less than straight and some have a small twist. I needed help feeding them through to keep them flush to the fence.

The next challenge was removing the hatched area. Because the boards aren't straight and I already cut the bevel, I decided against trying to rip out the waste and took the router table approach. I'm using a 1" mortise bit to remove the waste.


Feeds from right to left.

This is the worst of the first pass:


I scored the board edges at the depth of the final pass and so far none of the chipouts have gone past that. The first pass was under 1/8". The final will be at 1/4". I planned on two more passes to complete the job. I'm just worried about what will happen when I get to that depth.

I thought about reversing the feed. The boards are 6' to 8' in length so they shouldn't fly out of my hands.

What would you do? (other than stop creating all this work for yourself and enjoy life!)

[Jim Dwight]

Nice use of feather jigs on the router table.

I like to make my final passes lighter than my earlier ones. So I would take most of the remaining material in the next pass and plan one clean up at the end. I find that I get a more accurate final dimension if the last cut is light.

If the boards are warped some, how is that going to work for the mirror frame? Can you cut out pieces straight enough it will be OK?

The only hard to plane material I've worked with has been figured American hardwoods, primarily maple. Light cuts with sharp blades worked best.

[glenn bradley]

I have used that stuff and for the same good reason. Beautiful chatoyancy.

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It can be worth the fight ;-)

I scribe the boundaries of the profile with a wheel gauge or a knife, take about 1/32" on the first pass. I then take 1/8" passes ending with about a 1/32" final pass.

[Chris Padilla]

I think I would take most of that out with the table saw and then touch it up with the router or just hand sand it after that with a hardwood block with sandpaper glued/stuck to it.

[Myk Rian]

Might be a good use for a card scraper to get the fuzzies off.

[Julie Moriarty]

I went back down to the shop and routed out inside the edge. I needed the depth to be about 1-1/4" so that left about 1/4" of the edge still intact. I routed all the boards to the final depth, leaving the outer lip until the light bulb turned on.


The gnarliest board.

This is the kind of stuff it left behind


I then used the edge of the bit closest to the fence to take on the lip left behind. It worked out fine on all but the really gnarly ones.

And even then, it wasn't that bad. Now all I'll have to do is some sanding and I think even the worst will be ok. I think it will be a while before I succumb to the temptation of AM chatoyance again.

[John C Bush]

Hi Julie,
I milled a bunch of thresholds with a bevel cut and found it easiest to first make the waste relief cut on edge on the TS, then the bevel cut, then with stock flat on the TS make the final,shallow waste relief cut. Featherboards helps manage the stock's "personality" and it fells much safer as well. Little late for this suggestion, tho.