Purple heart planing tearout

[A Womack]

See earlier thread on some tearout I was experiencing with purple heart and edge grain plaining using a mostly untuned Stanley No 4.

My "new" number five arrived middle of last week, after some gunk cleaning and placement of a professionaly sharpened blade (original was badly pitted for about 3/4" behind it's existing edge and needed MAJOR removal to be used), I used it to surface the same purple heart. I experienced less tear out than with the No. 4 and I expect this was due to a much smaller throat opening I was able to achieve with the No 5.

Still a bugger to plane, there is tearout on all the boards and it will take quite a bit of sanding to "fix it".

Are there Stanley planes with higher bed angles better suited to tropicals or will I need to move into Asian planes, Knight toolworks type planes?

Alan

[brocpuffs]

Purpleheart is a beast to plane no matter how you try it.

I have a Lie-Nielson smoothing plane, just about the optimism plane wouldn't ya think? - and I still get tearout. This plane, used with as sharp an edge as I can manage, at a very shallow cut and used at an angle to the direction of planing, can do a lot of good work.

Until you hit a grain reversal, say, or a bump in the wood from not-quite-complete previous smoothing.

I was once trying to smooth some p-heart cabinet legs, 4 feet long by about 1-1/2" thick and wide. I could start on one side, see which way it planed best, then go about it very carefully, and it would come out pretty good.

THen I'd turn the leg 90 degrees to the next side, and rip hell out of it. I'd have to reverse the leg to cut in the opposite direction. You need to start each side with light, careful planing to see which direction is best.. A grain twist or direction change can soon trip you up, though!

I had tearout for which I needed to do some finish sanding, even after the Lie-Nielson. Since the wood is so hard, regular sandpaper is sorta unhelpful.

I used Norton's "3X" paper, which can actually do a good job on this wood. I still had some bits of tearout I chose to ignore.

Purpleheart is hell! (but pretty)

James [e-mail]

[A Womack]

I've noticed on the small jewelry box I am working on that the grain will reverse on the same piece at least once. I have major sanding ahead of me..

Alan