hand plane technique

[Silvan]

Try walnut. I'm trying some *soft* maple after cutting my teeth on, and getting pretty confident with walnut. Maple is proving to be bitchy. My board looks like crap. I'd imagine hard maple would just exacerbate all the problems I've been having, so the wood could definitely be your trouble. Especially if you have any board edges in a flamey area, which are proving effing near impossible to do anything with.

Poplar is too easy for good practice. You can get away with sloppy technique (like stripping off a perfectly formed 1/32" thick shaving with every pass) that just ain't gonna work on a real hardwood.

Save the maple for another day, my friend.

[Fred the Red Shirt]

Beech is even soft compared to maple. The issue with beech is that it seems to resist splitting so well that as you push the plane it feels like if you let go it would spring back at you. It makes good shavings but if you do a project in beech you can expect to have arms like a truck driver by the time you're done planing.

[Doug Miller]

Man, that's the truth! Ever split it by hand for firewood? Talk about _work_!

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

[Silvan]

No, can't say as I have. There's a beech tree somewhere in the woods near hear. I've seen beechnuts, but never picked out the tree. That's about as close to knowing anything about the species as I come.

Having said all that useless stuff, I'll pit your beech against my 2' diameter red gum crotch and we'll see who breaks the most mauls. Took us two years to split that damn thing, going out to whack on it whenever we got pissed off.

Helped the McIntyre family get through my teenage years. I don't know whether Dad or I got the most whacks in, but I was the one who finally split it.