In the process of building another vanity and when at the local store I had to have a piece of 12″x10′ Birds Eye Maple. I was thinking of this for the drawer/door fronts. The most appealling areas of the boards has many knots so I started by trying to mill an extra piece I picked up and it seems difficult to mill with the jointer without getting a lot of tearouts due to the changing grain directions. Is it best to work this material with a low angle hand plane? Is this going to be a challenge? This is not furniture nor the main bath, so I am not interested in spending excessive amounts of time on this part of the project.
Thanks
Replies
Birdseye maple is notorious for tearout. Be sure that you jointer and planer have sharp blades and that you take a light cut, you can usually get by with them. But, if not, you will have to rely on hand planing, scraping, and sanding.
Woody
Also wet the surface of the wood before you run it through your plainer.
Best,
JimI know less than half of you, half as much as I should Like;
I like less than have of you, half as much as you deserve.
You can usually machine-plane it successfully, if you're careful. Your blades have to be brand-new sharp, you have to take very light cuts (1/64" or so), and it usually helps to thoroughly dampen the wood surface with a wet sponge before sending it through the planer (wet it before each cut).
You will still have some tearout, but it should be minor enough to remove with a cabinet scraper and some sanding. Some people advocate grinding a small back bevel on the planer and jointer blades, increasing the cutting angle, but that's a lot of work, and you wouldn't want to use those blades when working with ordinary lumber, as it puts more stress on the machine.
By the way, if you're going to hand-plane it, you want a high-angle, not low-angle plane. An increased cutting angle (the same thing you get with the back bevel mentioned above) encourages the chip to break before it tears out, thus reducing the damage to the surface. The downside is that it requires a lot more force to push the plane through the wood, because you're scraping more than slicing.
Having said all of that, you occasionally encounter an exceptionally stubborn piece of figured wood that just won't behave, in which case heavy-duty sanding is about the only thing you can do. I don't know if the problem is induced during drying or what, but I've had some curly maple and walnut where the curly parts seemed to want to tear out if all I did was look at it crosseyed.
-Steve
Glad I asked, yet again great help. I will try this before working with the final piece.
Thanks
All of the aforementioned are true- esp the bit about high angle (York pitch) planing. I have used BE a fair bit, and have had good luck jointing it with a carbide cutter head.The other thing to be aware of is that BE is not so kind to cut. I have had more than the usual number of kick backs, esp bevel cutting and I take extra precautions when cutting it with a TS. I tend to cut it on a BS and use a handplane of shooting board to clean up the tool marks.Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Some would say it's cheating, but the end result is what counts. I run the "nasty" pieces of lumber through my planer to just over 1/8th" of desired thickness and then run them through the drum sander. People only see the finished product and I hate to spoil good lumber.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Sounds logical, send me a drum sander, lol. Thanks for the tip
I am in the process of finishing a jewerly box made of birdseye maple, quilted maple, quilted walnut, and burled maple. I had the same question as to how to avoid tearout, not only on the BE maple, but also on the other figured woods. I bought a LN low-angle bevel-up smoother. I re-ground the blade angle to 40 degrees and put a 2 degree microbevel on it. With the iron mounted at 12 degrees, this results in a 54 degree cutting angle. It worked great. No tearout whatsoever!
I just joined this discussion group.
I was told to, and have used the following. Soak a rag in the hottest water you can stand and wipe the board down. This softens the fibers thereby preventtig said tearout when you plane the board using a very light cut. The water also raises the grain. Sand them down or use a scraper.
I'm working on a project now out of curly maple. I was getting terrible tearout on my jointer. I got good results edge jointing it on my router table, though! I used a 1/2" bit and had UHMW plastic attached to the face of the fence. At first to make up for the width difference of the front and back of the stock (in front of and behind the cut) I made some thin shims and was able to set the outfeed portion of the fence farther forward. I didn't like that, though. Then I got the Grrripper! [sparkling zealot eyes]. With the Grripper I can push stock across the bit and the Grripper registers against the fence. It's a little hard to describe, but easy to set up and works really well. Zero tearout!
Just send it to me and I'll send you some nice pine or oak. Both are easy to work with!
Or, you can soak, plane and sand it.
Trade one bdft for one bdft, what a swell guy you are. LOL!
lol, everyone else already covered the "good" advice... so, this was all I had left :0)
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled