surfacing resawn tiger maple

Have you tried spraying the board with a mist of water before running it through the planer? I am sure that you have already thought of this, but make sure your knives are really sharp and you are taking the lightest cut possible.

Bob McBreen

: Planer seems to tearout more and more the thinner it gets, handplanes : tearout a bit, and the drum sander's temporarily out of commission. Any : suggestions?

handtool way: use a scraper. power tool way: build a sled on which you mount a router. Put in a flat bottomed bit. Build runners to either side of the maple piece, equal height, and run the router back and forth, up and down. Then sand.

-- Andy Barss

Sharpened the knives just before trying it, tried the water misting.

I can get a reas>

Have you tried running the piece through taped to a backer board? Maybe there is too much flex at the thinner thicknesses that the backer board would eliminate.

Gary

How about a scraper?

I've used a scraper, it's just really slow and tedious...

card scraper...

Just yesterday I was working on some quilted maple and getting some tearout even with my best planes. The solution: Lee Valley scraper plane (their variation on the old Stanley #112). Cleaned it up in short order.

Alternatively, if you have a #80 scraper, you can make it go almost as fast, but you have to be a bit more careful to keep the board flat.

Chuck Vance

Before I had a drum sander I would re-saw my figured wood with a carbide blade and then plane the back side. The planed side would tear out but the re-sawn side only took minimal sanding, worked great.

The carbide blades leave a nice smooth finish, probably because the tips are square on the sides instead of tweaked out like the bi-metal sort.