I am scraping some highly figured curly maple. The overall results are great. My concern is that when looking at an angle across the board with a light, you can clearly see “skid” lines or “smear” lines that indicate exactly how the scaper cut. I am nervous that these lines will be visible after my finish is applied. Anyone know if this is normal? I don’t recall these appearing on walnut but it probably didn’t reflect as well.
Thanks for any suggestions.
“100 Years” — scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work — “If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I’ll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)”
Replies
You will probably ave to touch up with 220 grit paper.
zombeerose, it's quite common to see scratches as you describe, particularly in fine pored woods, like the maple you're working on. Such scratches are more difficult to detect in coarse grained wood (oak) or medium grained wood (walnut).
The edge of your scraper-- the burr-- gets nicks in it just as handplane irons do, chisels or, for that matter, the blades in a planing machine.
Quite a few people say they nearly always polish straight off the plane or the scraper but, in my experience, being able to do this on a regular basis and get a very high quality of smoothness means you spend an awful lot of time resharpening the tools. I find you can polish straight off the planes and scrapers (in a typical fast paced commercial environment) only if you're going for the slightly rusticated, wavy, and imperfect look.
If you can keep these scores down to only minor blemishes you should be able to do a bit of light sanding to get that final bit of prepping done.
I rarely sand finer than 220 grit, and that would be on something fine grained like your maple. I might go a little finer, perhaps to 240 or 280 if the job in hand warrants it. In your case I'd try sanding at 220 grit to start with. If that doesn't fix the striations go a little coarser at 180 grit and come back to your 220 grit and apply your polish.
If I was working a more open pored wood, like a coarse oak I'd probably stop sanding after any planing and scraping at 150 grit, or possibly 180 grit. With walnut I usually go to 180 grit, but possibly 220. The open pores in walnut are finer than in oaks.
Sanding open pored woods (oak, ash, chestnut, etc.,) to fine grits always seems counterproductive to me. The open pores are bigger than the scratch pattern of 220 grit paper so I can't see the benefit of going down to numbers like 280 and so on.
Now, if you're planning to put pigment stain on your maple you might want to only sand to perhaps 150 grit to give the pigments somewhere to lodge, but I digress-- you didn't ask about that kind of stuff. Slainte.
Richard Jones Furniture
I understand what you mean regarding the possible nicks, or variations, in the cutting edge of the scraper. That would lead to the different shades on the surface. I don't really consider them scratches though because it is such a miniscule difference that I can not feel the variation and when looking at the board from a perpendicular angle, you see nothing wrong. Maybe a better way to describe this would be to imagine having a group of separate pieces of chalk in your hand. When you drag them all across a chalk board at once, the random spaces between the chalk pieces left the board visible. However, you can not discern the thickness of the chalk lines against the board because they are so small.I am a little dumbfounded to hear three replies that suggest sanding after scraping. I believed that the benefit behind scraping was the nice "cut" surface versus the "torn" surface that sandpaper yield. The figure and ability for light to reflect is much more pronounced from a cut surface. Does this also mean that if the board was hand-planed, you would also do a final sanding on it?Thanks for your advice!
"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
"Does this also mean that if the board was hand-planed, you would also do a final sanding on it?"
Yes. In more than 30 years of this horny handed, hairy arsed, hammer swinging wood whacking game for a living I can probably count the times I've polished a table top straight off the plane and/or scraper on the missing fingers of my right hand.
It isn't generally a viable option in woodworking for money to finish straight off the plane or scraper-- unless you're looking for that rusticated, rough look I described earlier.
Personally, I think there are a lot of myths put out concerning the viability of polishing straight off the plane. Yes, it can be done, but the time required to get the wood just so in 99.9 percent of circumstances is cost prohibitive from a commercial point of view.
Additionally, if you're using steel planes and scrapers on tannin rich woods like oak then you end up with black marks from the sweat/iron/tannin mix that need to be removed. A bit of sandpaper does the trick very efficiently.
It's my experience that once you get dye or pigment stain, etc., on a table top (for example) along with a film forming polish you really can't tell the difference between what was planed and/or scraped for an inordinate amount of time to an exceedingly fine level, and what was planed and scraped only pretty good--- and lastly sanded. Slainte.Richard Jones Furniture
If I were gay...not that theres anything wrong with that...(Seinfeld)...I would love to be your husband! One too many Sam Adams tonight... By the way, I think Lee G. is kinda cute too...
Now there's an interesting proposal of marriage, Jimmy, ha, ha!
But I'm hurt that you also have a soft spot for that old mucker Lee-- makes a man quite jealous. Slainte.Richard Jones Furniture
Wow! I am still spinning in the thought of sanding after scraping. Thanks for all the info and words of wisdom.Now, I almost have to question the point of planing/scraping in the first place if you are still going to go back over it with paper...doh! I assume the difference is that it is such a light sanding that the torn fibers are not nearly as deep as a full job sanding.Thx again!
"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
"Now, I almost have to question the point of planing/scraping in the first place....."
If you're polish prepping by hand, then the answer is speed. If I assume you're prepping after after truing, squaring, executing joinery, shaping and the like using powered equipment that leave distinctive scallops in the wood then hand planing will remove those scallops faster than any amount of portable belt sanding, random orbit sanding or hand sanding. These sanding options never really do a satisfactory job after rotary cutter type woodworking in my experience.
Those scallops are deeper than merely surface deep. If they're not removed properly they come back to haunt you once you get a bit of polish over the top, especially on horizontal surfaces like table tops.
Now, sanding using fixed machines of the stroke sander type, drum sanders, bobbin sanders, disc sanders or oscillating thickness sander type, etc., is a different ball of wax altogether. They'll shift machine planer marks very quickly, but they also leave their own characteristic sanding patterns that usually need dealing with in some way before polishing. Slainte.Richard Jones Furniture
Ah ha! The light went on. :) The scallops dilemma is a good point, especially since I recently missed some on the coffee table I did and didn't notice them until it was finished. DOh!As always, thanks for the info Slainte.
"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
zombee,
Speaking purely for myself here. I handplane mostly to remove machine marks. It's faster than sanding, usually. I scrape either to level joints or to remove tearout from the hand planing. It's faster than sanding. I hand sand to prepare a uniform surface for finishing. Advocates for handplaning, or scraping are free to disagree. I'm more interested in building furniture (I do it for a living) than either pushing a plane, or a scraper for its own sake. For some it's the journey, puttering along behind a plane, for others it's the destination, depositing the check in the bank after a job well done. Nothing wrong with either approach, I reckon.
Cheers,
Ray Pine
Sounds as though the majority of folks, at least in a business setting, follow-up scraping (and planing) with light sanding. I must say I am still shocked but my bias against the use of paper for finishing has been changed.Thanks to everyone that has replied. :)"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
Edited 4/12/2006 10:56 am by zombeerose
can you use a scraper with plywood? When to sand and when to scrape?
Certainly you can scrape veneered man-made board storme. Veneers are cut using a sharp knife and pressure bar on logs that are soaked. The knives get nicks in them and leave characteristic scores running somewhat diagonally across the grain that need to be removed if the top veneer of the man made board is to be brought to a high finish and a blemish free veneered wood surface below is important. The veneers themselves have a face side or back side depending on which side was to the outside of the log or to the inside as the knife peels off the veneer layer.
Most plywoods, whether of common or garden constructional grades or of high quality custom or bespoke laid up veneers are run through sanding machines too by large manufacturers to remove the worst of the marks, but these practices usually leave their own characteristic sanding patterns that often need dealing with. If you lay up your own veneers on man-made board then often the job's important enough to get the surface well prepared prior to polishing.
Scraper planes of various types set fine can be used as well as hand held card scrapers for this job, but of course it's imperative to avoid scraping too much veneer away. You can get ghosting if the veneer is scraped too thin. This means the glue layer below 'ghosts' through and, of course, there is the risk of scraping right through to the glue layer, or worse.
You can use hand or power sanding techniques only instead to bring the veneer layer up to a high quality surface, or you can use a mixture of scraping and sanding.
If I'm having to work veneered panels by hand methods only I tend to scrape first and then final sand. The final sanding most commonly might be a combination of random orbital sanding and hand sanding or one or the other of these sanding techniques in isolation all depending on the job in hand.
You have to judge which approach is best for the work you're doing. I find that I don't have hard and fast rules for this work. Slainte.
Richard Jones Furniture
Richard, pardon me for interrupting the wooing that's going on here <g> but what type of paper would you use for this sanding? I'm trying to get more discriminating about what I pick up for any given task. Would you use garnet?forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
That's alright fg. I suspect the lurvefest wis goin' nowhere special anyway.
I do like garnet paper for hand sanding with a sanding block. I'm not averse to aluminium oxide papers either, but I do have what's probably an irrational preference for garnet paper.
It's hard to describe, but I have a suspicion garnet papers leave softer more rounded straitions than other abrasive papers, It seems to be that as the friable garnet breaks up exposing new cutting edges that they're somehow more gentle than other types.
I'm probably just talking a load of old bollox, but that's my impression-- nothing scientifically tested here at this end. Slainte.Richard Jones Furniture
"I'm probably just talking a load of old bollox" I think not. Just purchased the Traditional Finishing Techniques book from Taunton, and the first article has info about the different types of sandpaper and how different the surfaces can be that they leave. Don't have the book here with me, but seem to remember that garnet may not cut as aggressively as some abrasives, but leaves a much smoother surface.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
However, thinking back to the old "time is money" thought.... Al oxide paper will cut faster than garnet and last longer by a good margin. I've read that most people will opt for a faceted yellow pencil over any other color or style. So, I wonder if the partiality to garnet has to do with its color and the romantic notion of our (those of us at near middle age) youth. It's the kind my dad always had in the garage when I was a kid. Personally I like that white aluminum oxide paper. It's the stuff used in the shop I worked in as a teen. Nothing else feels so good, conforms so well to my hand, looks so pure..... sighI also sand after scraping and planing. The old timers would have killed for a Fein random orbit machine.
Some of the oily woods I seem to hit, any of the non-coated papers just seem to clog long before they are worn out.
Interesting to relate this thread to something on a recent thread where someone was comparing the final finish after sanding and planing - the result seemed to be that although you could see a difference before the finish was applied, after finishing he could not detect a quality difference. (can t remember the source of this discussion but it was here somewhere)
Dave
"...looks so pure..... sigh" Too funny.
Here are the paragraphs that caught my eye in the Taunton book (article is written by Strother Purdy):
That info is what leads me to think Richard's description wasn't hogwash (or whatever the European equivalent was, LOL!)forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
jamie,
they dont wash hogs in Scotland, they bring them inside for warmth.
Then in summer they write new piping tunes such as "the muckin of geodies byre"
dave
After scraping I almost always do a final light sanding with 220 or finer paper.
I'm perplexed behind sanding over a scraped surface. That seems to be counter-productive and turns the "cut" surface into a "torn" surface.Thx!
"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
I thought the same.... until I spent some time with Tage Frid. I have sanded after scraping ever since. A VERY light sanding will not tear the surface. Sanding gets a bad rap with the holy grail of planned surfaces crowd, but, like Frid said, whatever works. Hell, he sharpened his chisels on a P-C belt sander clamped in a bench vice, the guy was about getting the work done!
Well, first off I'm jealous that you were able to not only meet one of the masters but spend time with him - NICE!Secondly, I agree w/ do whatever works (safely). I just want to maximize the potential of my wood. :)
"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
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