I have a recently acquired Powermatic model 100 planer. It’s a great little workhorse, but I’ve noticed that it leaves a deep signature in the wood. I can hand plane the surface smooth, but then if I hold the piece up to a raking light, I can still see distinct planer marks along the entire length. It takes a lot of handplaning to remove them entirely. I don’t remember this being such a problem with my delta benchtop planer.
So how do most woodworkers deal with this issue? Is it common to make a final pass through a benchtop planer or drum/belt sander before handplaning?
Thanks
Replies
How much are you removing in each pass? If you take a shallower cut, does it matter? It may need some setup to get rid of the marks.
I agree with you, but the problem may be due to dull knives or a slower cutter speed additionally. Sounds as if cutters are compressing the grain deep in the wood. Northboundtrain might try wetting the planed surface then drying it with an electric iron to swell the fibers back to near normal.Cadiddlehopper
Fairly good chance that one knife is set a bit high.
John W.
I doubt if you'll eliminate them without sanding or doing a lot of planing by hand. Most people I know , including myself, eliminate them with a Performax or other wide belt sander and then -- if a really smooth surface is needed before finishing -- use a random orbital sander to eliminate the fine lines from the wide belt abrasive. Sounds rediculous, I know, but it's not that slow or redundant if you're in a production mode. For small projects, I'd just go directly to the ROS after planing.
I was taught to smooth plane and then hand scrape all parts received from the joiner. The scraper is an excellent tool, if sharpened correctly it will remove very very fine shavings.
It is a 3"x 5" piece of tool steel about 1/16" thick
the thin edge is honed square to the face then an edge is rolled (burred) using a tool called a burnisher, mine is an old triangle file with the teeth ground off and then polished smooth.
Like all edge tools there are differant degress of sharpness.
hope this helps
floor sweeper
The general procedure is if you can't plane the wood then scrape it. If you can't scrape it, then sand it. Planing will produce the best finish if the wood can be planed.
Planing, scraping, & sanding are discussed & compared in FWW #180 on pg 64. Do you agree with the writer? Northboundtrain has a machine which probably should do a better job than it is regardless of our working philosophies.Cadiddlehopper
Anytime you plane or scrape at an angle closer to vertical you do not get as good of a finish. A cutting/slicing action is best. for example scraping mahogany will tend to mash the fibers. If they are cut with a plane they will be cleanly cut and you can easily see the pores of the wood. I can get such a polish on a piece of hard maple by planing and then burnishing it that you could see the face of another on the wood. Sanding and scraping will not come close to the result a sharp wooden hand plane will give.
a scraper is, if sharpened correctly , a fine cutting tool, never have i smooth planed a piece of wood,even after polishing the cutting edge on my hand plane with jewelers rouge on a hard felt polishing wheel, had a finished product ready for the finishing room.I believe the proper procedure to prepare the surface for stain and finish is. plane, scrape out torn grain and other abnormalities and then sanding, remember you can dampen the wood surfaces to raise the grain between grit changes. Thanks
floor sweeper
If you hand plane the surface it is highly unlikely that you will be able to stain the surface much. If a customer wants me to stain a piece of wood I just get out the belt sander or orbital sander and grind away. When I hand plane the surface I use a wooden hand plane with the mouth opening just so it will just pass a shaving which I can see through easily. The thickness of the shaving is about .001" to .0015" The blade is sharpened on a black hard arkansas stone to a mirror polish. If you hand plane a piece of wood there is little or no need to raise the grain because the grain will not raise and if it does it is very small compared to sanding or scraping. When a surface is hand planed it will also take much less finish.
Any planar will leave such marks due to the cutting action of a cylinder head on a flat board: you are going to get several shallow, thin cuts next to each other. To get a smooth surface you need either a continuos cut (like a plane or scraper cut), or you need to sand down the ridges left from thickness planing.
As Cadiddlehopper suggests, I think that the signature is due to the compression of the wood fibers rather than an uneven rippled surface. I can hand plane the surface perfectly smooth, but the planer marks are still visible. So the fibers are compressed relatively deep into the wood. The trick is to somehow reduce the depth of the compression and/or use an intermediate step to remove the marks prior to hand planing.
My options right now are to try and take a lighter cut on the last pass through the planer (or do the final pass with the benchtop planer) and then maybe use a hand-held belt sander before the hand planes, scrapers, etc.
I'm thinking about buying a drum sander mainly for this intermediate step. I know that the less expensive type drum sanders have fairly limited capabilities. Is this an appropriate use for one?
Edited 3/7/2006 3:29 pm ET by Northboundtrain
Any planar will leave such marks due to the cutting action of a cylinder head on a flat board: you are going to get several shallow, thin cuts next to each other.
Yup. Factors that make it better are slower feed rate, larger cutter head diameter, and greater number of knives.
Hit the surface with 80 grit paper on a ROS and the marks with disappear.
Lately I've been using just a cabinet scraper. I'd also be inclined to use 120/150 grit instead of 80 to remove planar marks, since we're not looking to remove much stock.
I think even the helical heads with a zillion carbide cutters will still leave a dimpled surface that will need a final treatment to flatten it and make it finish ready.Recommending the use of "Hide Signatures" option under "My Preferences" since 2005
Here are the steps that should address the problem.
o Sharpen the knives
o Accurately set the knives in the cutting head
o Take thinner bites and/or slow down the feed rate.
Planers and jointers cut with a rotary motion. This causes the scallops in the surface of the wood. The scallops are always there and a machine planed surface will always need a final smoothing before finishing. A hand card scraper works well as does 150 grit sandpaper followed by 180 grit.
might not be the answer you're looking for, but the easy way to fix this is not to put them in there in the first place... I quit using wood munchers for that very reason...
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
I use a handled scraper to remove planer marks and all sorts of semi-final scarping. I have a Kuntz copy of a Stanley #80 that I've fettled until it works quite well, but the veritas looks much better because it has a longer sole in front of the scraper. Angle it as you push it away, first one way, then the other, whichever gives the best cut without chatter. This is one of the most underrated tools on the peg board.
Also, the fibers can be compressed as another poster pointed out. This is especially likely if your planer knives aren't sharp. In this case, wipe with a wet sponge and let dry before you scrape.
A card scraper will work also, but a handled scraper is much more effective.
[Edit} Hmm...this should have been addressed to northboundtrain...not sure what happened here...probably operator headspace and timing..... [end edit]
As much time as you're spending power planing, hand planing, scraping, and sanding to give your boards an acceptable appearance and smoothness, you might be better off just hand planing from the start. It does not take that much time, and you end up with at least as good and often better a surface than you're getting now. (Less noise, dust, etc, too.) Just a thought.
Edited 3/8/2006 2:24 pm by pzgren
You are right. It takes me about two to three strokes with a hand plane to smooth the surface of the wood.
"As much time as you're spending power planing, hand planing, scraping, and sanding to give your boards an acceptable appearance and smoothness, you might be better off just hand planing from the start. It does not take that much time, and you end up with at least as good and often better a surface than you're getting now. (Less noise, dust, etc, too.) Just a thought."
Funny, I was just thinking about that today. I've never tried to square and straighten wood with just hand planes. I should sometime, just to see how it goes. I wonder how fast hand planes and a bandsaw are compared to jointer-planer-tablesaw/bandsaw.
It's not difficult, and after you've done the first board, it's reasonably fast, and fun as well.I've written up a quick tutorial on taking rough lumber to a ready-to-finish board. If you're interested, I'll email to to you.James
" I wonder how fast hand planes and a bandsaw are compared to jointer-planer-tablesaw/bandsaw."
I'm a hand tool fanatic of sorts & I love to plane by hand, but my thicknesser is one of the few power tools I almost always turn to over the equivalent hand tools. I buy my lumber rough sawn and it is WAY faster & more accurate to dimension 100 BF of lumber through the planer than it is to plane it by hand. Now, one or two small boards - sure, handplane 'em. It's more trouble to drag out and set up the thicknesser. But more than that, I plug in and put on the earmuffs. Any planer marks on visible surfaces get planed/scraped/sanded out later in the process anyway.
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
Most probably a knife adjusted to high. Or simply a knife thas is knicked.
Happens frequently if you work with wood that was stored outside and was exposed to sand carrieed by wind.
I got fed up with the high cost in time and money for re sharpening the knifes. Now, a 15 in. sander does a wonderful job with 120 sand paper. It does not bother me as much now when I slightly damage a knife.
"Now, a 15 in. sander does a wonderful job with 120 sand paper. It does not bother me as much now when I slightly damage a knife."The problem is when you try to hand plane that surface. The surface is full of knife dulling sand embedded into the surface of the wood.
On larger pieces and glued-up panels I use my 4x24 Bosch BS with the sanding frame. Follow with a ROS. On smaller pieces I'll plane and scrape or ROS. The next machine on my list is a Performax 22/44 or ShopPro 25 or 37 if I can wait that long or find a used one locally.
John O'Connell - JKO Handcrafted Woodworking
The more things change ...
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Petronious Arbiter, 210 BC
Here's the way I delt with the same issue with my old planer.
Hand plane and scraper.
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http://www.superwoodworks.com
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