Suggestions for planing crotch figure

[Rob Luter]

I have a bunch of walnut crotch wood that I’m trying to get prepped for use as box tops and small drawer fronts. It was rough sawn (emphasis on rough) about 20 years ago and air dried. I’m trying to flatten some pieces and then resaw them for book matching. This stuff is about like trying to plane a marble countertop with interlocking grain. High angles and light cuts work ok, as does a toothed blade and light cuts. That said, it’s slow going. A cambered iron on a Jack plane was kind of a train wreck. Suggestions, other than patience?

[Andrew Hughes]

I’ve had good success with walnut when it’s air dried figured or crotch didn’t matter. Is it possible your material has grit in it? Is the blade getting dull I hope nobody tried to sand first.
Ive had mineral streaks in maple that were a bear.
Good Luck

[Rafael Herrera]

Learn how to use the chipbreaker. It's useful in all the stages of planing, from rough to the smoothing stages.

[Rafael Herrera]

It's not a fast process, since you have to avoid creating deep tear outs when doing coarse planing, but you don't have to limit yourself by only taking light shavings. That's the biggest advantage of the chipbreaker.

The bevels of the lid were cut with a no. 4.

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[Rob Luter]

I'm all over the chipbreaker thing, but it's not much of a factor when using a cambered iron on a #5 or when using a Low Angle Jack like my #62.

The challenging portion of the exercise was getting the piece flat and uniformly thick. When rough sawn at the mill, the blade wandered a bit and this was compounded by a little twist from the drying process.

I was trying to remove material with a #5 jack plane to true it up. The wood was uncooperative on anything but a very light cut. I changed to a toothed blade on my #62 and honed to 35° for a 47° cutting angle. It worked very well but was slow. After I trued it up I followed up with a standard blade on my #62 (also ground to 35°) to flatten the piece. Final smoothing was done with my #4, which I keep with a very tight mouth and very close set chipbreaker. The smoothing process was easy peasy.

I resawed the piece and have a nice bookmatch, unfortunately a little blade drift resulted in one piece thicker than the other. I need to build a sticking board today to hold the glued bookmatch for final thicknessing and smoothing. I'll post photos of the finished product.

The next project is to tear down the band saw for a complete tune up. I plan on doing quite a bit more resawing and want to avoid creating extra work.

[Kevin Jenness]

Sometimes wetting the surface can help with tearout.

[Rob Luter]

I wondered about that. Sometimes I’ll hit end grain with DNA prior to planing and it makes a big difference.

[Tom Trees]

Why would you intentionally stop the cap iron from working properly by having a tight mouth?

[Rob Luter]

Why would you intentionally stop the cap iron from working properly by having a tight mouth?

I guess I can't tell the difference between not working properly and working exceptionally well.

[Tom Trees]

I stand by what I've said, and the key to this is using two planes which the cap iron is utilized.
Having both planes without a tight mouth what could be said for differing reasons for the most part.

The panel plane/fine set jack, because it is simply too much effort, (twice as hard to push) to use for heavy shavings...
(and for straight shavings when you need to, the cap iron won't be able to get close enough.)

Having a tight mouth on a smoother has much to do with the latter,
though some like to take only the thinnest of smoothing shavings, I do wonder how much harder they're making things for themselves,
by uber sharpness, which to me is a sign that the cap iron doesn't have enough influence.

It seems as though the tight mouth camp would think the cap iron simply isn't capable of being totally effective on it's own.
If what the other Rob said is true, he seems to think so.... or perhaps is keeping shtum about it?????

I'll bet nearly all those folks still haven't honed their cap iron's to 50 deg or above.
The straight shavings are all the proof you need, that is heavy shavings compared to planes with tight mouths, with burnishing, crinkly, waxy appearing, straight shavings with substance, and they won't need assistance due to the strength.

Cosman's repertoire is a perfect example of getting the cap iron to half work.

All the best
Tom

[Rafael Herrera]

What is the actual difficulty you are having?

To begin with, this is difficult wood to plane by hand. There's no plane that will just peel away the shavings with no effort. The aim is to minimize the effort to achieve the desired result. For example, planing to thickness, taking thin shavings to achieve it is very inefficient. The use of cambered planes comes to play here, I'm not talking about the camber you see on scrub planes in social media. My understanding is that those irons are effective on green wood, right after it has been split. On dry wood, that is not going to work so well. You need some camber, but you have to adapt it to what you're planing. Keep in mind: the wider the cut, the harder the effort and conversely; the deeper the cut, the harder the effort and higher the risk of creating tear out and conversely. The chipbreaker mitigates tear out. The closer the chipbreaker, the harder to push the plane and the lesser the risk of tear out. Set the chip breaker close/far enough to take doable shavings, not produce huge tears. As you get to final thickness, retract the iron and advance the chip breaker to start to clean up the tear out, finish with a smoother if necessary.

Closing the mouth of a bevel down plane is counter productive. If you have the chip breaker engaged, it will cause the shaving to choke at the mouth if you want to cut substantial shavings. If the chip breaker is retracted, the shavings won't choke, but you'll lose the chip breaker effect. The solution for this problem is to move the frog back and give the iron + chip breaker room to work.

The close mouth configuration is part of the bevel up planes configuration.

I don't know what your actual project is, but if you're resawing and book matching the pieces, the outside surfaces of the original board need only be flat. Going to the effort of smoothing them is unnecessary work since the inner resawn surfaces are what ultimately will be the show faces.

I can't comment on the bevel up jack or toothed iron, I don't have either. My understanding is that the first was designed for planing end grain, a rather narrow application, and the second was superseded by the double iron several centuries ago.

[Rob Luter]

What is the actual difficulty you are having?

Communicating I guess. I'll sum up.....

Post #1: Made the observation that crotch walnut was difficult to plane while trying to get a piece of stock trued up in anticipation of resawing. Tried a couple things I picked up here and elsewhere and had mixed results. I solicited suggestions from the SMC Illuminati. This was my first or second time working with this kind of figured walnut. I was betting others out there had traveled this road and would be willing to share.

Post #2: Further explanation on my part and the realization that planing this wood will be slow going. That's just how it is. I shared what seemed to work. I picked up up the tips on the bevel up #62 from Chris Gochnour. The toothed blade works well on squirrely grain without tearing out. Grinding a steeper angle on the regular iron emulates a high pitch frog and is friendly with the same squirrely grain.

Regarding mouth versus chipbreaker: The mouth of the #4 is set at standard "smoother" size, as opposed to how my jack is set. The chipbreaker is about 1/32" from the cutting edge. I only take fine shavings and have never had an issue with choking. That said, thanks for the cautionary tale.

Regarding my actual project, I think I explained that I was trying to get "outside surfaces of the original board" flat and coplanar in anticipation of resawing. They started out anything but flat and coplanar. Smoothing them as a final step was my choice as I'll be seeing the interior of the door panel too.

Since the last post I've made a quick and dirty sticking board and will now start reducing the thickness of the one side of the bookmatch to match the other. I'll be taking most of the wood from the outside surface so as to preserve the mating lines of the bookmatch to the greatest extent possible. That said, the sawn surface needs some flattening. My earlier experiments have suggested a process to follow. I don't really care if the match is less than perfect. The chatoyance in the wood will prevent that anyway.

In any case, this whole process has been a learning experience, and one I was glad to have. I strive to learn something new every day I'm in the shop and every time I engage with the membership here. My takeaways from today's activities:

1) Slow down
2) Slow down
3) Workholding is important
4) Light cuts rule the day.

[Rafael Herrera]

1/32" is the setting I use for the coarsest (thick shavings) passes when smoothing.

What I gather is that the preparation of the board is what the problem is. The goal is then to get it flat and straight with as little effort as possible.

Vary the setting of your chipbreaker, try closer to the edge, 1/64", and see how thick you can make the shavings. That will give you efficiency and mitigate/avoid tear out.

You can get very close to the edge with the chipbreaker but there will be a point where the shavings will bunch up, back it up a little and keep the shavings thin. That setting will leave the surface glossy.

P.S. There's no magic distance, don't waste time measuring 1/64", just get the cap iron closer to the edge than 1/32" and see how it responds, try closer, etc.

[Warren Mickley]

A few notes:

You want to do the resawing before you true up the face. Otherwise you will need to true it again after sawing, wasting time and material.

A double iron jack plane has a modest camber and the cap iron is likewise cambered to mirror the edge, so you can put the cap iron relatively close to the edge. The amount of camber on the iron should be such that the cut is nearly full width, but the corners do not dig in. Just rounding the very corners of the iron will make a mess of things.

[Joshua Lucas]

On difficult grain I tend to start with a straight-edged plane (jointer or LAJ, depending on the size of the work) taking a medium cut across the grain, then follow up with a finely set smoother with cap iron. Finally clean up any remaining tearout with a card scraper.