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Thread: Hand planing white oak.

  1. #1

    Hand planing white oak.

    My 4 1/2 smoother seems to produce nice shavings on a piece of cherry. Then I try it on a piece of white oak, tear out city! I could use some help.

  2. #2
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    Cherry is a lovely easy wood to work with. White oak is a much harder wood. Use a bevel down plane. Narrow the throat of the plane; watch grain direction very carefully, (the most likely cause of tear out).
    ​You can do a lot with very little! You can do a little more with a lot!

  3. Sharpen the blade. Set the cap iron appropriately for smoothing: https://www.theenglishwoodworker.com...ear-out-video/

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeff Andresen View Post
    My 4 1/2 smoother seems to produce nice shavings on a piece of cherry. Then I try it on a piece of white oak, tear out city! I could use some help.
    With a 4-1/2 your best bet is to set the cap iron very close to the edge (as in less than 0.01" from the edge). I'd recommend starting with David Weaver's article on another forum and go from there - Search for "David Weaver cap iron" and you'll find it.

    Richard Murphy's video on englishwoodworker is OK, though as Warren Mickley (the other Warren) has pointed out he's off-base on a couple points of cap-iron use. I think that David's article is a more reliable source on balance.

  5. #5
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    A common saying - "sharp fixes everything". Well, it doesn't really fix 100% of everything, but it is always the first thing to do when troubleshooting an issue when working with planes and chisels. That white oak may be tough enough to maybe see what a narrower iron might do. Maybe try a sharpened, close mouthed and correctly set cap iron on a #3 or 4. Light cuts and look out for the grain changes.
    David

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by William Fretwell View Post
    Cherry is a lovely easy wood to work with. White oak is a much harder wood. Use a bevel down plane. Narrow the throat of the plane; watch grain direction very carefully, (the most likely cause of tear out).
    Watching grain direction can obviously help with less-than-ideal tool setup, but if you have a properly configured smoother with a close-set cap iron then you can plane in any direction (including directly against the grain) without tearout. That's a handy thing when you have wood with reversing grain, such that individual plane strokes hit multiple directions.

    Narrowing down the throat will limit the extent of any tearout, but won't prevent it. What it will do is prevent you from using a truly tight cap-iron set, though, as combining them leads to choking. I'd leave the throat open and focus on the cap iron instead.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warren Weckesser View Post
    Thanks, Patrick, that's a great article: [link deleted to save the mods some time]

    You gotta admit, though, that a gnat's nadger is a bit more entertaining than just 0.01".
    Posting a link to WC is against SMC terms of service. That's why I posted the search string instead :-).

    FWIW my typical set for problem woods is about 0.006", and I've gone as low as 0.0035". I posted a picture of the latter (used on a #3) in another thread here a while back.

    EDIT: This thread.
    Last edited by Patrick Chase; 12-21-2017 at 10:44 PM.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Chase View Post
    Watching grain direction can obviously help with less-than-ideal tool setup, but if you have a properly configured smoother with a close-set cap iron then you can plane in any direction (including directly against the grain) without tearout. That's a handy thing when you have wood with reversing grain, such that individual plane strokes hit multiple directions.

    Narrowing down the throat will limit the extent of any tearout, but won't prevent it. What it will do is prevent you from using a truly tight cap-iron set, though, as combining them leads to choking. I'd leave the throat open and focus on the cap iron instead.
    I always use a tight cap iron on white oak. When you get it working well and change grain direction I find it causes 'pitting' which is just short tear out. If you open the throat the pitting changes to tear out. It also depends how much material you are trying to move how wide the throat and close the cap iron. However when all is working well the thing that mucks it up is grain direction.
    ​You can do a lot with very little! You can do a little more with a lot!

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by William Fretwell View Post
    I always use a tight cap iron on white oak. When you get it working well and change grain direction I find it causes 'pitting' which is just short tear out. If you open the throat the pitting changes to tear out. It also depends how much material you are trying to move how wide the throat and close the cap iron. However when all is working well the thing that mucks it up is grain direction.
    If opening the throat changes the pitting to tear-out, then the cap-iron wasn't truly set close to begin with. For that matter if you were able to close down the throat without choking then the cap-iron probably wasn't set close to begin with.

    Again, we're talking about less than 1/100" of setback to minimize tearout on difficult wood. See David's article.

  10. #10
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    I always wanted a 4 1/2. Maybe I will look for one.

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    Howdy Jeff and a belated welcome to the Creek.

    Patrick gives some good advice about learning more on how to set the chip breaker.

    Some woods need a plane set for very light shavings to avoid tear out.

    If you are in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon let me know if you would like to get together for some help with this. If you can include your locality in your profile you may find another member in your area willing to offer their help.

    My #4-1/2 was somewhat of a troublesome plane to use until it was tamed a bit. This was even with most of my work being in soft fir. Fir does have its challenges just like every other piece of wood.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Chase View Post
    If opening the throat changes the pitting to tear-out, then the cap-iron wasn't truly set close to begin with. For that matter if you were able to close down the throat without choking then the cap-iron probably wasn't set close to begin with.

    Again, we're talking about less than 1/100" of setback to minimize tearout on difficult wood. See David's article.
    Yes my cap is set properly. The definitive piece on cap setting is in Japanese from a college. Their microscopic camera looks at no cap and cap setting at various microns, cap angles etc. It explains why the back pressure from the cap is generated and how it works. The best bit is you can see it in real time. Never again will you question cap setting.

    The new Clifton's have one piece cap irons which seem identical to Lie Nielson. Their new manufacturer has set an incredible lapping standard for the blade and cap iron. The precision with which you can set the cap is most impressive. Not even wood dust gets between blade and cap!

    I've had to resist my tendency to 'tweak everything' by honing it as I would only make it worse! Bought three of their new planes as I expel bevel up from my regular planing and could not be happier. Will post a review some time.

    My planes are not set up as scrapers, I like to actually remove wood when I plane. So Patrick I say again, when all is working well it's the grain direction that screws things up.
    ​You can do a lot with very little! You can do a little more with a lot!

  13. #13
    I have been using the double iron since 1973. If you can't plane either direction, your plane is not well set up.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warren Mickley View Post
    I have been using the double iron since 1973. If you can't plane either direction, your plane is not well set up.
    Do you just use a single setting for your cap iron setback? Is this because you target a certain shaving thickness? If so, what do you target for the shaving thickness?

  15. #15
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    Mine are set at about 1mm back from the edge. Be aware, White Oak planes way different than most other woods.....ribbons instead of shavings. I usually plane at a skew to the grain...
    jack plane.jpg
    Ribbons...

    jumbe jack.jpg
    At the Skew....
    side view.jpg
    Before any finish was applied...

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