[Q] Is it just me? : Hand plane + soft pine = tearout

[Fromey]

Long story short;

When it was apparent that my workshop would be 1 - 2 years away from being renovated and kitted out, my wife hired some cowboy to make some built-in storage. He banged it together with Homebase/B&Q planed pine and a nail gun :roll: Needless to say, part of it fell apart recently (fixed in by only 1.5 mm of nail!)

I decided to show this wood a hand plane for the first time in its life, but what I'm getting is horrendous tearout. Even with a brand new No. 4, scary sharp honed (BTW, I can't rave enough about 3M lapping paper and float glass) and set with a tight mouth, it still tears out like the Incredible Hulk from his jeans and shirt.

The wood is somewhat knotty which I suspect is part of the problem, plus its soft pine, so I think a low-angle plane would be the more appropriate tool. But I am still left wondering, is it my technique/tools or is this what you get from this type of wood?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Chems]

You do need very sharp tools to plane pine. And the laminated board stuff your trying to do in my experience is un-planable. And I have a very nice LN4 but it gets tear out too.

The only good results I've ever got are using a low angle block plane thats sharp, or a spoke shave which is also low angle I think:

 

[cerdeira]

Hi

Pine can be hard to plane specially around the knots where you always get grain against the planing direction. You also need sharp blades otherwise the plane tends to skim along the surface without taking any shavings.

Having said this, you shouldn't get much tearout on most surface areas because pine grain is relatively straight and well behaved (as opposed for instance to quartersawn sapelle and other exotics which have grain and reverse grain along each other).

Are you sure you aren't taking shavings too thick? Also check the chip-breaker and move it towards the blade edge so that it is off by about 1/2mm.
The chip breaker can have dramatic results in the finishing as it increases somehow the effective angle of attack.

You can also try other tricks as honing a back bevel in the iron, but I would try to fine tune the chip breaker first.

 

[woodbloke]

Planing knotty pine is a regular, cast iron, 24carat nightmare. All you can really do is make sure the mouth is very tight and the iron very sharp. After planing, attack it with a ROS and diminishing grits of sandpaper to get a decent finish - Rob

 

[Fromey]

Thanks for the speedy replies guys. My plan of action will be;

Sharpen the No. 4 blade, including a 30 deg microbevel and try again.
Sharpen up my block plane (is it advisable to microbevel that as well?) and give that a go.
File, polish and burnish my Bharco scraper with my shiny new Clifton burnisher and give that a go.

Does that sound reasonable?

(Note: It's not laminated pine, but the four-square planed boards type of stuff.)

 

[jimi43]

Try planing in the opposite direct still with the grain but down the valley so so speak....

I can't remember the visual mnemonic but I'm sure someone will pipe up with it...you look at grain pattern on pine as contours on a map...those pictures...this is for mechanical planing but the same applies

How to read grain direction for planing

I like the analogy of stroking a cat or dog...(except pine is the South African Ridgeback of the wood world!)

IMHO - the infill planes I have have opened my eyes to planing softwoods...there is virtually no tearout when using a well set one of these!

Jim

 

[bugbear]

IMHO - the infill planes I have have opened my eyes to planing softwoods...there is virtually no tearout when using a well set one of these!

Jim

Effective pitch probably the strongest factor, assuming a sharp blade. Most infills are around 50°, which helps.

BugBear

 

[JoinerySolutions]

Try skewing the plane as you work, that is rotate the plane at an angle to the direction you are pushing, this effectively alters the angle of approach for the blade and alters the effective pitch. It is something I do from habit when encountering difficult grain in any timber, Iroko and Sapele can be just as awkward as knotty pine. In really awkward situation planing (skewed) across the grain to get flat then a well burnished scraper in the Veritas holder to clean up.
As an aside, while working in a German shop I learnt how they use freshly cut pieces of glass as cabinet scrapers, they worked very well but I will stick to my own made ones and my Veritas ones.

Rob.

 

[cerdeira]

Thanks for the speedy replies guys. My plan of action will be;

Sharpen the No. 4 blade, including a 30 deg microbevel and try again.

I don't see how a microbevel would improve things. to minimise tearout you need to increase the pitch. One way to achieve that is, as I said, to move the chip-breaker so that it's near the blade edge. This will force the shavings to curl and avoids tearing.

Sharpen up my block plane (is it advisable to microbevel that as well?) and give that a go.

A block plane lacks the mass to effectively go through knots, you'll probably experience chattering

File, polish and burnish my Bharco scraper with my shiny new Clifton burnisher and give that a go.

pine is too soft to be scraped easily ie it acts like foam: you'll compress the fibres instead of cutting them.

now, of course, these are my views, you do whatever you want.

 

[Aled Dafis]

So, some use a block plane (low EP), others use an infill (usually high EP), some use a scraper and others say that a scraper is no good. :? :?

Personally, I find that EP has little effect when planing Pine (whereas a higher EP will always help when planing hardwoods), the only thing that makes a difference IMHO is the sharpness of your edge, yes you will still get some tearout, but considerably less with a "scary" sharp edge.

As regards scarpers, I agree with cerdeira, they're of little use in softwoods as the wood is so soft that it compresses in front of the scraper instead of being cut cleanly.

So. in conclusion, get out your Random Orbit sander. :wink:

Cheers

Aled

 

[Aled Dafis]

I don't see how a microbevel would improve things. to minimise tearout you need to increase the pitch. One way to achieve that is, as I said, to move the chip-breaker so that it's near the blade edge. This will force the shavings to curl and avoids tearing.

I'm not sure if I agree. I've never found that the positioning of the chipbreaker actually affects planing performance, and firmly believe that if your shaving is thick enough to be "broken" by the chipbreaker then you're already in tearout territory. Many people have written extensively on this topic on the web, but I can't actually remember who at he moment, I hope that someone will be along shortly to help me out.

Closing the mouth of the plane is also said to improve performance, and I was firmly on board with this idea, that is until I used David Charlseworth's Holtey plane which had a mouth opening of close to 1mm and it still performed faultlesly.

A far more effective way of eliminating tearout is to hone a small back bevel on your iron, a 10deg back bevel will give you an EP of 55deg on standard bench planes and is a good place to start. A BB of 15, 20 or 25deg will further enhance planing performance (20 and 25deg are quite extreme, but work well on seriously interlocked grain).

Cheers

Aled

 

[Dodge]

Well folks I was suffering from the same problems about a decade ago and I made a breakthrough and can honestly say I have never had this problem with pine or similar softwoods since.
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I stopped using the bloody resinous stuff and solely work in hardwood! NO Softwoods in my workshop.

Simples!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Fromey]

Thanks again for the feedback.

Last night I scary-sharpened my new QS No.4 blade with a straight 25 deg bevel and indeed it helped a lot with the tear-out. As did skewing the plane. I now see for your replies that the wood is problematic and so I should be thankful for what I've now got. I agree that I'd prefer to use hardwoods (but was forced to address this pine as explained in the first post). Since I drive past Coyles in Bath every day and Timbersource is just down the road from me in Frome, I should be able to get a good supply

 

[big soft moose]

if its cheap whitewood from a DIY shed chances are it isnt pine at all, but larch or spruce or some other variant of propellor wood.

my advice would be to show it a belt sander - or for preference a bonfire

whats the wife doing hiring cowboys when she's got a 'master craftsman' in the garage/shed anyway... you need to put your foot down :lol:

 

[woodbloke]

So. in conclusion, get out your Random Orbit sander. :wink:

Cheers

Aled

...60g works for me :shock: - Rob