The "What am I doing?" Holtzapffel Workbench #7: Dealing with tear out

Maybe leave it for a couple days and just think about what you’ve done and what you could do to change the outcome. Talk to a lot of people and after a bit, try again. You can do it!

-- jack -- ...measure once, curse twice!

Okay, take a deep breath, are you planing it straight with the grain, maybe you can try going diagonal across the wood, or move the plane straight but while it is angled to one side or the other. Soft woods can be tough. If that doesn’t help, put a 2# cut of shellac on it, if you don’t have any shellac, you could thin some poly with mineral spirits, 50/50, apply let dry and cure, this will stiffen the wood fibers enough to allow some more planing, but resharpen your iron first.
Things like this can be a challenge, work benches were a very common test of ones apprenticeship, because they can be so difficult.
Hope this helped
Good luck.

-- Even a broken clock is right twice a day, unless, it moves at half speed like ....-As the Saw Turns

Andrew, I’ve done directly across the grain, diagonal, and straight. I get tearout somewhere no matter which way I go!

It’s only a workbench, and it’s my first major project, so I’m not too upset. And at least I know WHY I’m having these problems. I was too impatient to get get started on the glue up and paid NO attention whatsoever to the grain direction.

It’s actually gotten pretty flat, which I’m kinda proud of. Just missing chunks!

-- A woman's work is never done-but power tools help!

You could try using the jig to sharpen your plane blade to a higher angle, something that would come closer to the angle of a scraper plane. I’m not sure if this will really make too much of a difference, just a thought. Softer woods are so much harder for me to plane. They love to tear out and when they do it’s usually a disaster. I agree with the others and say take a break for a while then come back later. You’ll get it.

-- LAS, http://www.abettersign.com

Maybe come at it from a different angle. Rig up a jig to a router and flatten it with a hinge mortising bit.

-- Greg, Severn MD

No router available.

-- A woman's work is never done-but power tools help!

You could try to flatten with a belt sander then go over it with a scraper or a more shallow bite with your plane to smooth

-- Roscoe in Iowa

You probably just need to change the direction of attack. Traverse, instead of parallel. And sandpaper makes “shiny” not “sharp”. But I digress. Slice, don’t chop.

Douglass fir is not hard, it is very soft. And that could be your problem. It is somewhat contrarian to logic. but softwoods require even sharper tools than do hardwoods. By skewing your angle of attack: i.e.; traversing, you increase the angle of attack and create a shearing action at the cutter you make it easier on the edge.You will slice instead of lift and you will not experience as much “tear out”

In the time that it took me to respond to the above eight or so people have chimed in with excellent advice. I still stand by the notion that soft woods require really sharp tools . . .

Grumpy, I’m really trying for sharp. I need practice, I know!

-- A woman's work is never done-but power tools help!

I had the same issue tackling the top on my table..http://lumberjocks.com/projects/28445 I also used fir. It is not the plane and it is not you. It is the soft wood. It just won’t hold its own….So I just went across the grain to flatten as much as I could without too much tear out and then sanded away. This approach gave me the best result.

Thanks, Chelios! I’ve actually done pretty well with the scrub plane and the jack, but I think it’s time to admit hand tool defeat and go with sanding.

I still have the base to do, and you can bet I’m paying attention to grain direction this time!!

-- A woman's work is never done-but power tools help!

Hey don’t blame me… jack, get it? ;0) oh, wait, sharp oh, ok… never mind… ;0)

Have fun out there!

-- jack -- ...measure once, curse twice!

I don’t really have much to add but maybe a higher blade angle and a slightly tighter mouth? Looking forward to your results.

Can you describe the shavings you are getting?

-- Jim