Joy and tear out

[Phil Stone]

I have been a casual woodworker for a very long time, but only recently have I gotten serious about my long yearning to work with hand tools. I'm finally getting the hang of sharpening, so using hand planes is becoming correspondingly more satisfying. I'm nearly finished with my Roubo (which I'll post about separately when it's done), but I'm already clamping things to it and getting stuff done with it.

Last night, and at lunch today, I created great big piles of curly, wispy maple shavings as I smoothed and chamfered the vice chop:

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It's hard to describe how much pleasure this brought me, but I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here anyway. The feeling and sound of a sharp, well-adjusted plane slicing through hardwood on a rock-solid bench has rapidly become one of my favorite things. I'm sure my aching triceps will learn to enjoy it, too.

I had one small area of tear-out (but not enough to ruin the bliss!):

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Is it time to overcome my irrational fear of scrapers? (Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but I've never sharpened one of 'em yet).

[Kent A Bathurst]

Trees invented reversing grain just to screw with you. Their way of getting even for being turned into slabs of lumber on your bench. Do not succumb.

Card scrapers are your best friend. You just have to meet them halfway.

There is an active thread on this - check it out. There are a couple posts with links to instruction videos. Check those out. Good stuff.

Once you "get it", it just about the simplest dang thing.........

PS - nice pile of shavings. Keep up the good work.

[Judson Green]

And if things get really nasty there's always a good old Dutchman.

[Jim Matthews]

Correct me if I'm wrong - we're discussing cosmetic faults
in a leg vise?

[Phil Thien]

Correct me if I'm wrong - we're discussing cosmetic faults
in a leg vise?

Yeah this time, but may as well learn how to deal with the tearout where it doesn't matter so much.

[Phil Stone]

Correct me if I'm wrong - we're discussing cosmetic faults
in a leg vise?

Well, yes. So there probably won't be any resorting to a Dutchman! But, as a friend of mine always says "It's all exercise." Meaning that I try to learn from everything I do, even if it's not fine furniture. That way, when I have to approach a piece of reversing-grain maple that *is* going into something meant to be beautiful, I'll have already learned how to avoid and/or deal with tear-out.

Besides, once I felt how silky-smooth my #4 made that maple, it was no longer just a leg vise chop, it was a thing of beauty.

[Phil Stone]

Trees invented reversing grain just to screw with you. Their way of getting even for being turned into slabs of lumber on your bench. Do not succumb.

Card scrapers are your best friend. You just have to meet them halfway.

There is an active thread on this - check it out. There are a couple posts with links to instruction videos. Check those out. Good stuff.

Once you "get it", it just about the simplest dang thing.........

PS - nice pile of shavings. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, Kent. Now, is the general idea with the card scraper to scrape away that damage and sort of feather it into the surrounding wood? I don't want to have to remove this much thickness from the whole surface.