Sanding would have saved a gorgeous piece of oak...

[Bay Area Dave]

I kept trying to remove about two square inches of tear-out in an oak board with the nicest grain I had left in the shop. the sucker is about

29 x 4 x 3/4". It is for my last drawer front on my desk. I ran it through the thickness planer hoping that would remove the tearout. The board got thinner but never smooth. I decided to just keep going to see if I ran it through a few more times, taking light cuts if it would come out nice. No way. So now the board is too thin (don't worry folks, I KNEW it was gonna be too thin; I'm in experimenting stage at this point) so I decided to see if sanding would remove the pits. Sure enough, the ROS, followed by 1/4" pad sander, made it purdy.

As the Joker said in Batman, "HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME..." Had I switched to sanding sooner, I would not have thinned the board too much. In order to save the board, I glued another piece of oak to the back. I'm anticipating this all might end up in the junk pile when I route the edge detail, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So...just how much are those Performax sanders? :)

How come purists don't like sanding? I know it can obscure the wood, but isn't there a time when sanding is the only solution to tear-out? Please tell me how you would have dealt with oak tearing during thicknessing. I tried both directions; the first direction was better. I know to watch the cathedrals...

dave

[George]

Could have used a cabinet scraper, y'know.

Though the lessons learned with pain tend to be the best-remembered.

[Swingman]

Did you try turning it around and running it through the planer in the opposite direction, or slightly skewed? Also moistening the board, or just the area, before planing it sometimes helps, although a scraper is the best way to take care of spots like that.

[martin]

Thats why the "brits" call em thicknesser to get it close but never to its final size,time to buy some smoothing planes and scrapers.

[Rumpty]

No it's time for B.A.D. to go to Ikea for his woodworking projects...but naw he'd probably screw up that too... [grin]

[js]

Geez Louise! Target owns Marshall Fields now???

[Bay Area Dave]

ah, the scraper I deleted from my recent Lee Valley ordering list, just before I called their 800 number... I was trying to curb my tool buying impulses or I'll have no money left for lumber. :)

dave

George wrote:

[Gary]

Have you tried sharpening your planer blades? If my planer can't handle the figure woods I like to work with (curly maple and curly cherry), then that's my cue to change blades. I have 3 sets for my trusty old Ryobi AP10 and I keep rotating them so I always have a very sharp set installed. I just planed some highly figured curly maple (which I consider one of the tougher figured woods to work with) and came out with a near perfect surface.

gary

[Bay Area Dave]

yes, I did run it through in each direction, even though I knew the original direction was the "correct" direction for the rest of the board. It didn't help. I also skewed it a bit. I'll get a scraper...sigh...I almost had one on my Lee Valley order due here in a couple of days with the smoother plane.

dave

Sw> Did you try turning it around and running it through the planer in the

[Bay Area Dave]

Hey Rumpty, was it something I said? :)

dave

Rumpty wrote:

[Michael Daly]

I'd been suffering from tool envy when going thru the LV catalogue. One day, I decided to make a list (Christmas is coming and SWMBO understands LV) of all the _little_ things I've been wanting. Three columns, ranking urgency etc. I ended up with a list of about 15-16 items. Most expensive was C$32, total cost for all items was C$200.

I thought, "for $200, I can get rid of a lot of my wishing and drooling", so I drove over to LV and bought the whole list. No more wishing, thinking or impulses and I use the things regularly.

Mike

[Bay Area Dave]

I'll take a look under the hood to check the blades, but judging from everything else I throw at it, I doubt they are dull. Thanks for the tip; I will look at them in a few minutes.

dave

Gary wrote:

[RKON]

[Robin Lee]

... that's on my "wish list" too.... :)

Cheers -

Rob Lee

[brocpuffs]

Thass OK man, you'd likely still get tearout. Sanding will work in the most goldarn frickin' cement-hard tearout=prone woods you can find. Purpleheart, for instance-

James [e-mail] http:// [e-mail]

[George]

Well, our family dropped the first hundred of the season on Sunday. Have to account for the mail delay to the kid overseas.

Hopefully the family keeps consulting the group of LV bookmarks under the folder "Dad Shopping" as they have in the past. Still looking for that last forged gouge, among others.

[Andy Dingley]

First rule of ecommerce: See whatever Amazon do, and copy that

-- Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods

[RKON]

Have you shopped on Amazon lately? They may have been an innovator in ecommerce but they are certainly over doing it on the shopping experience. They have cluttered their screens with so much crap that it is mind boggling. They are cross selling so much stuff that it makes the whole process so much more diffcult and time consuming. They leave so much clutter on the upsell opportunities, poor and inconsistent product information, and outdated products(This item is not stocked or has been discontinued).

They are getting as bad as a crowed department store with all of the extra tables in the aisles making it diffcult to shop.

[Mark]

I've never even opened Amazons page.

Never felt the need, don't think I ever will.

[Andy Dingley]

Fair point.

I'm in the UK, where their site is still as good as ever. But I've seen the US site, and I can appreciate what you mean about them overdoing it. Maybe Amazon are finally losing their clue ?

-- Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods