Hand finished look

[Neil Williams]

The popular thing these days in high-end floors and furniture seems to be the "hand finished" look where the surface looks like somebody went to town with a scrub plane lengthwise along the board.

Anyway, when I look at these things I notice that there's no tearout and surface is pretty smooth like it was sanded out normally. I was thinking about trying my hand at something like that. If you've made this kind of stuff I'm curious what the process is for avoiding tearout and sanding the final surface, which is pretty wavy.

Thanks,

--Neil

[Conan The Librarian]

Use a scrub plane. :-) Seriously, if the wood is straight-grained, you go with the grain and your scrub's iron is sharp and not set for too deep a cut, you can get a scalloped look with little or no tearout. I know when I'm scrubbing a board I'll sometimes go more-or-less lengthwise (as opposed to diagonally, which is the normal scrubbing technique) and it leaves a decent surface.

Anyhow, if you have a scrub plane, it wouldn't hurt to play around with it. Though I can't imagine why anyone would want a final surface like that. :-)

Chuck Vance

[Andy Dingley]

Nice look (not sure for floors though).

I don't know how it's done commercially, but I do this with a Japanese spear plane (which looks more like an engineer's scraper than a plane). Lee Valley sell them, or they're not a complex shape to forge yourself.

Hardest hand tool to learn to use that I have though. I suggest starting with some thick lime and lots of practice. Run it back through the planer after each attempt - by the time you've taken 1/2" off the board, you're halfway there. The finish is all dependent on subtle arm / hand movements and because it's the last operation you perform on the surface, you have to get it right first time on every pass.

[bridger]

in large scale commercial operations that "hand finished" surface may be created entirely with large sanding machines....