I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is to
remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung
oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There
are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.
My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the
veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
How do you decide on the blade depth of cut? I'm worried about taking
too much off in one pass and unflattening the board I'm trying to
finish.
As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was
planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had
several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when
the big compressor gets here.
thanks.
brian
> Seriously, you get what you pay for.
ok, so you're advocating waiting and getting the good stuff. I'm ok
with that. I ordered the scraper set from leevalley. I figure I'll
experiment with that.
>But IMHO, some of the
>tuning talk is over-rated--gettting a REALLY sharp iron is far more
>important than all of the other tuning steps combined.
I have a tormek. :-)
>But a finished project of moderately expensive wood is
>not a place to try out new techniques, and if you screw up the
>planing, you will have to do a LOT of sanding to correct your
>mistakes.
I was planning an experimental project up front. Something small. My
wife had requested those bear ear isoloc thingies from leigh. She also
wants me to try one of the inlay techniques they show on their website.
So I figured I would try the scraping/planing angle on this one as
well. I think I've decided on a bathroom over-the-toilet cabinet type
thing. It's a good place to hide a misfit project. :-)
brian
"brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There
> are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.
> My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
> anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the
> veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
>
> As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was
> planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had
> several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
>
> Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when
> the big compressor gets here.
Snipped a bit.
At the risk of being called a tool snob - OK call me one, I really am one -
If the choice is a cheap smooth plane or sanding, stick to sanding.
I own some very nice planes from LN, Veritas and Steve Knight. In order to
make them function properly, you do need to tune them. The cheap planes
with their cheap irons will not get as sharp or stay sharp long, especially
with Hickory.
The difference is time and energy. A cheap, sharp plane will indeed plane
for a few minutes, that's right a few minutes. This is under the
assumption your intention is to get a ready for finish surface and not just
hogging down and edge.
Learning how to pull a hook on a card scrapper is to me, a very important
endeavor. After you master this simplest of tools, it will no doubt be the
most used tool on your bench.
Dave
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Not to change the topic, but does using a spray gun to stain instead of
hand staining produce a better result?
brianlanning wrote:
> I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
> maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
> replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is to
> remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung
> oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
>
> I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There
> are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.
> My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
> anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the
> veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
>
> How do you decide on the blade depth of cut? I'm worried about taking
> too much off in one pass and unflattening the board I'm trying to
> finish.
>
> As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was
> planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had
> several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
>
> Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when
> the big compressor gets here.
>
> thanks.
>
> brian
I painted my first two projects. Then I stained and polied my second
one. Then I've made three or four major shop projects For the one I
stained, I used a gel stain with an old shirt. In the future, I'll
probably avoid stains altogether. I don't really care for them. I'm
mainly interested in various colored clear finishes like shelac or
varnish or poly. I admit that finishing is my weak spot though. I
know nothing about it.
Looking back at his post, I see that he said stain. I sort of read
finishing in general.
brian
Leon wrote:
> You want to cut just deep enough that you actually cut wood, no deeper.
> IMHO the plane should remove thin fluffy shavings almost effortlessly.
I find lots of folks that go with this theory. I guess I'm a bit of a
maverick, but really get down to business at first. I'm lucky enough
that I don't have health problems and a not-insignificant amount of
upper body strength, so when I hog off the high spots, I _really_ hog
off the high spots. Just today, I was pushing my bench across the
floor of the shop. My iron was dull, but I was gonna finish with that
#5 before I sharpened it, dammit. The #7 whispered off (most of) the
plane marks in just a few passes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather make 20 heavy passes
than 100 light ones. YM, of course, MV.
-Phil Crow
brianlanning wrote:
> I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
> maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
> replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is to
> remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung
> oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
>
> As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was
> planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had
> several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
>
> Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when
> the big compressor gets here.
>
> thanks.
>
> brian
Hickory and hard maple are both hard enough that they can be difficult
to plane, at least for someone who hasn't done much of it. On the
other hand, they both are hard enough that they scrape well.
The scraper should be all you need to remove planer and jointer marks.
John Martin
Using a plane is an art, and not learned on one project. Card scrapers
work well and are a lot easier to use and sharpen. I cheat now, I found
a painting company near by that has one of those big (52 inch wide
double oscilating head) sanders. I took a 84 by 40 by 2 inch thick
hickory table top to them to sand. Their rate is $140 per hour, and it
took them 15 minutes. It would have taked me all day to have done that.
Some cabinet shops have them, or would know where one is. All you are
left with is touch up work.
robo hippy
>Just got back from our monthly plane meeting tonight...
Roy - Where do you live that you have a monthly PLANE meeting? I think
there's one woodworking club in my area (central new york), and there
isn't even a dedicated woodworking store within a couple hours (that
I've found, at least). My friends that do woodworking kind of look at
me funny and lose interest when I start talking about planes - they're
much more into power tools.
I noticed the scraping plane insert also, but I recently picked up a
very nice hand-made cabinet scraper on ebay, so that and a card scraper
are meeting my needs for now.
Enjoy your plane friends,
Andy
I was in a woodworking class where we were building these coffee
tables. One of the students made the top by laminating a 3 inch wide
piece of ebony between two outer pieces of some other hardwood (forget
the species - but it was a nice color combination). He used a newly
purchased Lie-Nielson large scraper plane to finish the top, one of the
reasons being that sanding would have potentially caused staining from
the ebony onto the surrounding wood. Anyway, the result was absolutely
beautiful. The finish was like glass.
- MB
"Roy"
> Just got back from our monthly plane meeting tonight, wherein several
> (5-9) of us gather monthly to
> exchange plane/scraper information and try to learn something from each
> other.
Where is that!? I can't find a local woodworking group here in SoCal!
Dave
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i didn't read all the replys. there was a post a month or so ago about the
diffs b/t planes of different qualities/quantities.
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In article <[email protected]>, Andy Dingley
<[email protected]> wrote:
> That rare thing, a duff Lee Valley product. It's just not rigid enough.
It's also way overpriced in Canada, even though LV says it's made here.
$25 US, $36 CAD. I called our local store, pointed out that the two
currencies are onyl 15% apart.
djb
--
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
- Mark Twain.
"Andy Dingley" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:26:21 GMT, "Leon" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>Naturally the clear finishes revile the woods natural beauty.
>
> Only the ones Norm uses
>
LOL.
OK OK OK,, I do not always proof read may spell checkers changes. LOL.
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:26:21 GMT, "Leon" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Naturally the clear finishes revile the woods natural beauty.
Only the ones Norm uses
"Norbert" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:26:21 GMT, "Leon"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Of course, you mean reveal.
> Back on topic - scrapers are amazing for such a simple tool, and LV's
> scraper plane works very well and is easy to adjust for the lightest
> of cuts.
>
Yes.. My spell checker and I seldom agree.
"brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I believe so. I haven't tried it yet. I know that it will avoid brush
> marks. In theory you can get self-leveling finishes that make the
> brush marks go away. But I haven't had much luck with that. Spraying
> should go a lot faster also.
Ok, tell me you do not apply stain with a brush.
"brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
> maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
> replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers.
Yes you can however sanding is easy to learn. The smoother plane will leave
a crystal clear surface prociding you use a good and sharp plane.
>
> I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There
> are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.
> My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
> anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the
> veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
You should look in to one of Steve Knights planes. Reasonabley priced for a
high quality plane.
>
> How do you decide on the blade depth of cut? I'm worried about taking
> too much off in one pass and unflattening the board I'm trying to
> finish.
You want to cut just deep enough that you actually cut wood, no deeper.
IMHO the plane should remove thin fluffy shavings almost effortlessly.
Roy wrote:
> Just got back from our monthly plane meeting tonight, wherein several (5-9) of us gather monthly to
> exchange plane/scraper information and try to learn something from each other. I was perusing Rob
> Lee's online Tool Porn last night and stumbled across their scraping plane insert:
>
> http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&cat=1,310&p=32635
>
> Anybody tried one of these? I didn't think to ask anyone at the meeting tonight.
That's interesting. I can't see how, without a hinge at the bottom, you
could do that and expect to have any more than a degree or three of
range for the angle and not get (too much) separation between the
scraper and the holder.
er
--
email not valid
"Teamcasa" <[email protected]> wrote:
> The difference is time and energy. A cheap, sharp plane will indeed
> plane for a few minutes, that's right a few minutes.
Not if you replace the cheap blade.
brianlanning wrote:
> My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
Good answers above, but for smoothing a surface that's already been
machine planed, you just want a smoother (using the stanley numbers):
1-4: smooth
5: jack
6: fore (sortofa anemic jointer)
7-8: jointer
The dimensions of these planes can be found on Patrick Leach's page:
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan1.htm
If you want a cheap plane you are better off with a cautious purchase of
an old Stanley on ebay.
er
--
email not valid
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:45:45 +0000, Andy Dingley <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:37:11 GMT, Roy <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>
>>Lee's online Tool Porn last night and stumbled across their scraping plane insert:
>>
>>http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&cat=1,310&p=32635
>>
>>Anybody tried one of these? I didn't think to ask anyone at the meeting tonight.
>
>That rare thing, a duff Lee Valley product. It's just not rigid enough.
>
>Get a #80 (cheap) and a #112 (Veritas probably) when you can afford it.
I've got a #80. I want a #45 next.
I think I saw one of these Veritas scraper inserts at the Cutting Edge last time I was in there, but
I didn't pay attention to it at the time. I may have to wander over there this weekend and check it
out and fondle the Unisaw again.
Regards,
Roy
On 23 Feb 2006 18:36:40 -0800, "John Martin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>brianlanning wrote:
>> I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
>> maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
>> replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is to
>> remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung
>> oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
>>
>> As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was
>> planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had
>> several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
>>
>> Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when
>> the big compressor gets here.
>>
>> thanks.
>>
>> brian
>
>Hickory and hard maple are both hard enough that they can be difficult
>to plane, at least for someone who hasn't done much of it. On the
>other hand, they both are hard enough that they scrape well.
>
>The scraper should be all you need to remove planer and jointer marks.
>
>John Martin
You might also consider a scraper plane. For maple, as others have
said, even a fine smoothing plane will be a challenge -- the scraper plane
will be a better bet for the grain you will encounter with maple and will
save your thumbs vs. trying to use a card scraper for everything.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:59:58 GMT, Roy <[email protected]>
wrote:
>I've got a #80. I want a #45 next.
If it wasn't for the postage, I'd send you one of mine.
The #45 is a turkey. Like all of those iron combination planes it has
lousy cut quality. A rack of old wooden moulders might take up more
space, but the results are incomparably better.
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:26:21 GMT, "Leon"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>"brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>>I painted my first two projects. Then I stained and polied my second
>> one. Then I've made three or four major shop projects For the one I
>> stained, I used a gel stain with an old shirt. In the future, I'll
>> probably avoid stains altogether. I don't really care for them. I'm
>> mainly interested in various colored clear finishes like shelac or
>> varnish or poly. I admit that finishing is my weak spot though. I
>> know nothing about it.
>>
>> Looking back at his post, I see that he said stain. I sort of read
>> finishing in general.
>
>
>I gotcha now. Naturally the clear finishes revile the woods natural beauty.
>
Of course, you mean reveal.
Back on topic - scrapers are amazing for such a simple tool, and LV's
scraper plane works very well and is easy to adjust for the lightest
of cuts.
Hi Andy,
I'm about 25 - 30 miles as the crow flies SW of downtown Houston, Texas. We have a pretty good club
(www.wwch.org) with monthly Saturday meetings. I'd say about 100 folks show up each month on
average. Total membership is something like 190-200ish.
There are various "splinter" groups that start up when some member gets the real urge to learn more
or help someone. Most of these involve mini-classes in someone's workshop once a month or so. A
while back, one of our more Neander types got a wild hair and decided to start up a splinter group
for planes.
We've had a whopping two meetings. The first was to get organized and show off our favorite
hardware. We actually came up with 14 or 15 plane/scraper topics that we felt would be worthy of
full meetings. 5 of 6 people showing interest showed up that night. Last night 9 of 11 people that
expressed interest showed up, and one of the missing was out of town on business. We may need to
find a larger shop for meetings.
Last night we focused on sharpening. Scary Sharp (R), oilstones, water stones and diamond stones.
Everybody brought something, different folks demonstrated different methods, and everybody sharpened
all kinds of things. Lots of hands-on, some instruction, a little joshing and I think everybody had
a good time. 7 out of 9 of us had essentially the same jig, the $12 flat sided one sold by
everybody.
Next month's topic (I think) is on plane restoration. I was packing my kit when the discussion was
being held. I know I'm bringing in my electrolysis gear for a real-time demonstration. It's been a
lot of fun so far, and I know I've learned a good bit. I went in last night sold on Scary Sharp(R)
and came out trying to figure out what to sell to get a set of diamond stones.
Regards,
Roy
On 23 Feb 2006 22:24:04 -0800, "Andy" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>Just got back from our monthly plane meeting tonight...
>
>Roy - Where do you live that you have a monthly PLANE meeting? I think
>there's one woodworking club in my area (central new york), and there
>isn't even a dedicated woodworking store within a couple hours (that
>I've found, at least). My friends that do woodworking kind of look at
>me funny and lose interest when I start talking about planes - they're
>much more into power tools.
>I noticed the scraping plane insert also, but I recently picked up a
>very nice hand-made cabinet scraper on ebay, so that and a card scraper
>are meeting my needs for now.
>Enjoy your plane friends,
>Andy
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:37:11 GMT, Roy <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Lee's online Tool Porn last night and stumbled across their scraping plane insert:
>
>http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&cat=1,310&p=32635
>
>Anybody tried one of these? I didn't think to ask anyone at the meeting tonight.
That rare thing, a duff Lee Valley product. It's just not rigid enough.
Get a #80 (cheap) and a #112 (Veritas probably) when you can afford it.
On 23 Feb 2006 12:02:48 -0800, "brianlanning" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>I've heard that you can
>replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers.
Maple? Stick with sanding. Good quality, good range of grits, and maybe
a usable quality 1/4 sheet sander.
Smoothing planes cost more than $30 if they're to be usable. Maple isn't
the timber to learn on either.
Just got back from our monthly plane meeting tonight, wherein several (5-9) of us gather monthly to
exchange plane/scraper information and try to learn something from each other. I was perusing Rob
Lee's online Tool Porn last night and stumbled across their scraping plane insert:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&cat=1,310&p=32635
Anybody tried one of these? I didn't think to ask anyone at the meeting tonight.
Regards,
Roy
On 23 Feb 2006 12:02:48 -0800, "brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote:
>I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
>maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
>replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is to
>remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung
>oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
>
>I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There
>are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.
>My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
>anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the
>veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
>
>How do you decide on the blade depth of cut? I'm worried about taking
>too much off in one pass and unflattening the board I'm trying to
>finish.
>
>As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was
>planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had
>several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
>
>Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when
>the big compressor gets here.
>
>thanks.
>
>brian
"brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote:
>I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard
>maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can
>replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers.
True for the most part.
> My goal is to
>remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung
>oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
>
>I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There
>are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.
>My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does
>anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the
>veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
Pros: Cheaper
Cons: Cheaper
Seriously, you get what you pay for. But that doesn't mean the Griz
won't work--I have an old Stanley Blue Handyman plane that is just
fine with some flattening, rounding of corners, etc. You'll see a lot
about "tuning" a plane. And the Griz will need lots more of that than
a LV or LN, and may not be worth the effort. But IMHO, some of the
tuning talk is over-rated--gettting a REALLY sharp iron is far more
important than all of the other tuning steps combined.
>How do you decide on the blade depth of cut?
As fine as possible. Get a little scrap of wood to pass back and forth
across the mouth of the plane as you advance the iron until the blade
first begins to take the thinnest sliver off of the test piece. I use
a little 2x2x3" long piece of cherry that I shave the corner off of as
I set the planes.
<snip>
>Should I give up and just sand?
Yes. I'm a big fan of planing and scraping, and of not breathing
sanding dust. But a finished project of moderately expensive wood is
not a place to try out new techniques, and if you screw up the
planing, you will have to do a LOT of sanding to correct your
mistakes. Stick to what you know here, and get a decent plane when
funds are available, and practice on some scrap hardwood. Once you get
to where you see the difference between the clarity of your planed
surface and a sanded one, you will know you are ready to plane a
project.
BTW, while planing versus sanding can make a big difference in how a
surface looks when raw, I'm not convinced there is much difference
under a film finish -- I pane and scrape a surface I plan to shellac
mainly because I like the process so much more.
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather make 20 heavy passes
> than 100 light ones. YM, of course, MV.
I'm too skerd to do that deep of a cut.
On 24 Feb 2006 00:30:36 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
>He used a newly
>purchased Lie-Nielson large scraper plane to finish the top, one of the
>reasons being that sanding would have potentially caused staining from
>the ebony onto the surrounding wood. Anyway, the result was absolutely
>beautiful. The finish was like glass.
Ebony scraper finishes _beautifully_, and quite easily.
"brianlanning" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I painted my first two projects. Then I stained and polied my second
> one. Then I've made three or four major shop projects For the one I
> stained, I used a gel stain with an old shirt. In the future, I'll
> probably avoid stains altogether. I don't really care for them. I'm
> mainly interested in various colored clear finishes like shelac or
> varnish or poly. I admit that finishing is my weak spot though. I
> know nothing about it.
>
> Looking back at his post, I see that he said stain. I sort of read
> finishing in general.
I gotcha now. Naturally the clear finishes revile the woods natural beauty.