I recently purchased some 4/4 Shedua and had it resawn to 1/2 thickness. Now I need to plane it to 3/8″ and am running into problems with tear out. I have installed new blades, have tried reversing direction of feed, have tried removing a minimum of material, and have tried misting the surface of the wood. The moisture content is 7%. I am looking for tips and advice about how to prevent the tearout, or what to do.
One suggestion that has been offered is to use a drum sander, whick I do not have.
Thanks, Dale
Replies
Try and slow down the feed rate, and set the depth of cut to no more than 1/32".
I use a Delta 12 1/2" planer. How can I reduce the feed rate? I will try the less than 1/32" this afternoon when I get home. Thanks,
That kind is not adjustable, only the industrial machines are, unfortunately.
You have to grind custom bevels on your planer blades, if you want to do this, let me know and I'll point you in the right direction.
Other alternative is to hand plane, which should provide less tearout, but again to get it perfect, you will have to hone custom angles on your iron. Let me know if you need more information.
I have done some work with Shedua and found it to be easier to plane than hard maple, regarding tearout.
Yes, I am interested in the custom angles. Please advise.
Dale
You can find the information for your planer blades here
For hand planes, use a smoother, with a 35 degree final bevel on the bevel side of the iron and a 12 degree bevel on the flat back side of the iron. You have to be real sharp.
Willie, That is a good link. Thanks for posting it. I have it in print form, but had not seen it on that site before.Woodenheart. Shedua is one of those woods that is very prone to having block-model figure, so there is no way to surface with the grain. The only way to get a good cut is to reduce the cutting angle down to less than 10*. Since your planer probably has disposable, you may want to go back to your jointer to re-sharpen , and use for the final pass. However, you may be able to do it for the planer to. I normally don't re-sharpen those disposable knives, because they are so cheap, however there is no reason that you couldn't.When I am sharpening my knives for my large planer or jointer, I use my table-saw for the grinder. You set a fence across the saw like making cove, and the height of the wheel relative to the backset of the fence to determine the angle of grind. I have a kool-mist system that I set up to keep the cutting cool, but you can get by without it if you have someone to stand there and mist the wheel with water while you grind.The face-bevel only has to be as wide as the thickness of the chip that is being cut, so there will not be a lot of wheel contact. Hone after grinding.
Keith, thanks for the info. I am going to take some of the boards back to the supplier and have them drum sanded. I need them for a wedding project nest month. Then can do more experimenting and setup with the rest.
I appreciate all the advice and input from this forum. Thanks everyone.
Dale
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled