Curly Maple -- should I fight tear out with sandpaper or stick to planes/scrapers?

[Arnold E Schnitzer]

I work with lots of heavily flamed maple in my instrument-making. To tame tear-out, I dampen the wood and scrape in the direction of the flames (curls). This leaves a rather rough surface, which is then smoothed out with a thin scraper that has a minimal burr, in the direction of the grain. After grain-raising I sand lightly with 400 and the result is beautiful.

[Dale Cruea]

I have been working some curly soft maple the last couple of weeks.
The only tool I have that will remove the tear out is a LV BU jack plane.
I hone my blade to 35* and it works well for me.

[bob blakeborough]

I have a ton of really figured curly/flame maple and flame cherry, and I have yet to find any piece I haven't been able to tame without issue using my Veritas BU Smoother. I have two 38 degree blades so I just started putting a 50 degree secondary bevel on one of them and never looked back. Works crazy well!

[Chris Griggs]

Mike IIRC, you mainly are using vintage planes and homemade woodies. (Also, why have we seen no pics of your competed plane kit??? and what is it bedded at?)

Anway, if you have the BU planes mentioned than be all means use them. If not, I encourage you to give your nothing fancy plain ole bailey planes another shot. I've been planing a Nakashima-esc slab of walnut with a big VERY hard swirl with lots of figure right through the middle where large a branch came out. My jack plane tore it out like crazy, I should have been more delicate with my roughing work. I followed with my Sargent jointer. Wiith a freshly sharpened blade and closely set chipbreaker even taking only moderately light cuts most the tearout was removed. Followed with my bailey number 4, again freshly honed, closely set CB removed all the tearout without trouble. A freshly honed blade and a very closely set chipbreaker and a thin cut can work wonders with just about any plane. The surface is not glass smooth on the hardest most figured sections, but the tearout is GONE. It been working for me on birdseye lately too.

I will say that this experience has made me want to get a toothing blade for my LA jack - swirly knots and birdeye eye figure do not play with a regular coarsely set jack plane.

Oh and if you do go the sanding route, i seriously doubt 99.9999% of people will ever know the difference.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

When I have sanded curly maple, the things I had to do were to sand to higher grits than I normally would sand bare wood, I think last time I went from 220 to a series of scotch bright pads; the other thing was to make sure to always use a block when sanding - some of the curly maple I've worked with have been hard/soft/hard - almost like dealing with something like the early-late wood difference in some pines (although in the direction of the curl and not the grain) - without a backer, you can get a sort of undulating effect, which can look pretty bad if you're doing a gloss finish.

Experiment with the finishes you're going to use, as well - if you're just putting straight finish on it, it may not be an issue, but if you're doing any dying or staining, you may find a different effect depending on whether you sand or cut, and you may like one more than the other.

I like a cut edge better than a sanded one on curly maple, and the trick has always just been sharp blades that you keep sharp. I've tried to do as much major stock removal across the grain - not only can I remove stock quicker that way, but I get less of the hard-to-overcome tearout where a chunk lifts up. Then when I go to jointing, I take a thinner shaving than I normally would. But you can get away with a lot if your tools are sharp - I've gotten some near perfect smooth surfaces making rabbets on a curly maple box lid using a moving fillester - so no chipbreaker, and on at least one side of the box the plane was going against the grain.

[Zach Dillinger]

Do whatever you need to do to get the best possible surface for your work. If that means planing, do it, if you can plane out the tearout. If not, scrape or sand. The only problem that comes from this choice is if you are unhappy with the final result.

[Jim Belair]

I've worked with a fair bit of curly maple too and have been under the impression that if one starts scraping (or sanding) you need to scrape (or sand) the whole surface, otherwise differences will be apparent in the finished surface. There certainly is a marked difference in the unfinished surface appearance.

Earlier today I read this blog post, now I'm not so sure.

http://breenbushdesign.wordpress.com...e-preparation/

[Prashun Patel]

Mike, I'm resurrecting this thread. I am working on a curly maple desktop and am having tear out issues. I too am having luck wetting the surface. I'm curious as to why this helps. Also, is there a difference in using water vs mineral spirits?

I'd like to see how you finished it too? I am thinking oil/varnish....