Advice required on planing beech

[Graham Orm]

Having problems planing beech. I've not tried planing wide beech boards before, I'm getting a lot of tear-out and a lot of skipping. My planes (several tried...#4. two#5's, & a #7), are all sharp, flat soled, tuned and cut beautifully on other woods and thinner section. The one thing I don't have is a low angle jobby.....do I need one?

 

[bugbear]

Having problems planing beech. I've not tried planing wide beech boards before, I'm getting a lot of tear-out and a lot of skipping. My planes (several tried...#4. two#5's, & a #7), are all sharp, flat soled, tuned and cut beautifully on other woods and thinner section. The one thing I don't have is a low angle jobby.....do I need one?

Even if you did have a bevel up plane (which I assume is what you mean by low angle) you'd tune it to have a high effective pitch anyway, so no.

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

At risk of stating the obvious... But have you tried turning the wood round and planing it the other way of the grain?

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Years ago, I had exactly the same problem. Planes that performed perfectly satisfactorily on other timbers (pine, cherry, mahogany etc) chattered something rotten on beech. No amount of fiddling solved the problem. Fitting a Clifton iron in the Record 07, and buying a Lie-Nielsen smoother did solve the problem. Better cap-irons may help to stiffen up a standard iron.

At the risk of being shot down, I'm inclined to the view that beech is just about hard enough to be too much for the standard Bailey-type planes with standard thin irons and thin cap-irons.

 

[No skills]

Interesting observation. How sharp is sharp?

Are you planing for a finished surface or just trying to flatten the board? If its the latter then maybe a cambered blade would help, if its the former then I don't know - scraper plane maybe.

I am a novice in the world of hand planing so take the above how you will, its just what I thought first after reading your question.

 

[tobytools]

Are you skewing your plane when planning? As you know this lowers the effective pitch...

I've never heard of this when planing beech. I happens to have a boards and will have a try with several planes and post my progress.

Thanks
TT

 

[Graham Orm]

At risk of stating the obvious... But have you tried turning the wood round and planing it the other way of the grain?

Yes, but thanks for the input Andy. I've been back at it since my first post and had better results with the #7 with some heft behind it. I think there's some mixed grain there, I reckon it's a case of getting most off then some serious sanding.

 

[Graham Orm]

Years ago, I had exactly the same problem. Planes that performed perfectly satisfactorily on other timbers (pine, cherry, mahogany etc) chattered something rotten on beech. No amount of fiddling solved the problem. Fitting a Clifton iron in the Record 07, and buying a Lie-Nielsen smoother did solve the problem. Better cap-irons may help to stiffen up a standard iron.

At the risk of being shot down, I'm inclined to the view that beech is just about hard enough to be too much for the standard Bailey-type planes with standard thin irons and thin cap-irons.

Thanks CC. Best results so far with a 1903 #7 Stanley. I didn't think of maybe a better iron than standard.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

If you think you're going to end up sanding it anyway, try planing it diagonally or even cross planing it. I have sanded some really wild elm straight from cross planing.

 

[Graham Orm]

Interesting observation. How sharp is sharp?

Are you planing for a finished surface or just trying to flatten the board? If its the latter then maybe a cambered blade would help, if its the former then I don't know - scraper plane maybe.

I am a novice in the world of hand planing so take the above how you will, its just what I thought first after reading your question.

I'm confident about the sharpness. I polish on a 6000 water stone then on a strop with aluminium paste, I also back bevel. I have a scrub plane but don't want to use it as it's only a small amount of cupping I want to get rid of and was hoping to do it with my #5 as I would have with most other timbers.

 

[Silas Gull]

Some boards just are that way. I find it's all a matter of fettling, fiddling and then, suddenly, the shavings start to flow.
A healthy coating of Johnson's Baby Oil also helps matters.

 

[Graham Orm]

Are you skewing your plane when planning? As you know this lowers the effective pitch...

I've never heard of this when planing beech. I happens to have a boards and will have a try with several planes and post my progress.

Thanks
TT

Thanks for that TT yes skewed and not skewed. I've had better results by winding the blade out on my #7 a bit more and putting a great deal of humph behind it.

 

[Graham Orm]

Some boards just are that way. I find it's all a matter of fettling, fiddling and then, suddenly, the shavings start to flow.
A healthy coating of Johnson's Baby Oil also helps matters.

All good fun, candle wax is my choice of lube. Red perfumed at the moment (don't tell the wife), it's all I have available.

 

[Silas Gull]

Not tried candle wax. Love baby oil, though. Makes the old plane sing. Also the smell takes me back to a 'Gentleman' s Evening' in the back room of a country pub in the 1980's where two young ladies poured copious amounts of the stuff over their

 

[tobytools]

+1 on candling the sole
I've been having a go at some long beech plank, I used various planes record,stanley,Clifton even a japanese plane (kanna) I didn't experience a single problem. My plane have various iron from old to new and diffrent steels ect:

I reckon your right that the problem is in the grain difection.

TT

 

[Graham Orm]

Not tried candle wax. Love baby oil, though. Makes the old plane sing. Also the smell takes me back to a 'Gentleman' s Evening' in the back room of a country pub in the 1980's where two young ladies poured copious amounts of the stuff over their

..........number 7's?

 

[Racers]

Beech can be tricky, I think you need a sharper blade, I have had the same problem and a really sharp blade sorted it, and regular honing as soon as it starts to become harder to push, no matter how little work you have done.

Pete

 

[Graham Orm]

Beech can be tricky, I think you need a sharper blade, I have had the same problem and a really sharp blade sorted it, and regular honing as soon as it starts to become harder to push, no matter how little work you have done.

Pete

I'm confident about the sharpness of the blade, but I'll take that on board and give my favourite #5 which cuts best of all a freshen up, thanks Pete.

 

[Giff]

Graythorn I have had a lot of beech to plane as we had to take a very old tree down in our garden and I had it planked into various sized boards. That was a few years ago and I have been using it recently. I had a lot of trouble with some when the grain seemed to tear out and sanding didn't improve things much. I found that after it was planed true a cabinet scraper worked really well and seemed to completely remove all the "bad" areas.( maybe a scaper plane would work well too. Geoff

 

[Graham Orm]

Graythorn I have had a lot of beech to plane as we had to take a very old tree down in our garden and I had it planked into various sized boards. That was a few years ago and I have been using it recently. I had a lot of trouble with some when the grain seemed to tear out and sanding didn't improve things much. I found that after it was planed true a cabinet scraper worked really well and seemed to completely remove all the "bad" areas.( maybe a scaper plane would work well too. Geoff

Thanks Geoff.....I have come to the same conclusion and have been getting rid of tearout with a scraper earlier this evening. I thin that will be the way to go after a long period of coercing the grain with my #7 which seems to cope with it best.