Having trouble using a smoothing plane on red oak


Meatwad

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So I am close to finishing my workbench and the last step is to get some red oak I bought flattened for my top. I've been able to use my jack plane to take out some slight deformities but smoothing it out with my #4 smoothing plane has proven to be a very difficult task. I will keep sharpening my blade and see if that makes any difference but I keep reading online everywhere people are saying as long as your plane is "set up well" you should be able to do this. Can anybody go into a little more detail on this or what I should be looking for?

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Sharp blade, shallow cut, tight mouth. Biggest hurdle is watching grain direction. If there is any swirl at all, the direction will switch on you and allow tear out. And unless you have a premium FAS straight grained stock, oak will have swirl. Go slow and switch to a scraper for troublesome spots.

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I don't have it glued yet. I'm still just doing some prep work to make sure the red oak I got was flat on bottom.

 

I also have some pretty cheap planes (Amazon Basics and a Kobalt) but I will take some pics and let you all tell me if I have the mouth set right. I spent a long time yesterday flattening one of my chip breakers and I'll spend some more time today sharpening.

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All that will be helpful.  Two other points to add, Often a slight angle with the plane will allow you to "slice" the wood as opposed to hitting it head on.  The other is, relieve the corners of your blades a tiny bit, so the corners don't dig in and leave you with tracks that you'll go crazy trying to remove.  And don't forget, grain direction is highly important, don't get artistic, just keep the grain all going in one single direction.

One more thing.  The cost of your planes is unimportant. What's important is your learned skill in using what you have. Sharp blades, proper mouth opening and proper tuning.  But "sharp" is mandatory.

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Reading oak grain can be difficult as the prominent cathedral grain that the wood is known for isn't always the real grain direction. If it starts to tear switch directions. For smoothing operations it's common for me to attack a board in multiple directions to prevent tear out. I handle the transitions spots with a card scraper.

I don't encourage micro bevels but keep in mind you don't need to sharpen and polish the entire bevel especially with bevel down planes. Another thing I do is strop. you can get some stropping compound and use leather or even a board. This will give a razor sharp polish and can make all the difference in the world. There are a lot of conflicting ways to sharpen, my best advise is practice and find what works. It's a learning curve and really depends on the person. How i approach something isn't the same as the next guy. I started out using a cheap guide, it made a huge difference.

Your chip breaker should be VERY close to the cutting edge. If planing with the grain i haven't found that the mouth opening has a large impact. Mouth makes a much larger impact when there is swirling grain or figure.

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21 minutes ago, wtnhighlander said:

+1 To stropping. I find that MDF scraps with green (aluminum oxide?) compound are great for this. HF sells the compound pretty cheap.

I used contact cement to lay a piece of leather, smooth side down on a scrap of some kind of wood, then used green compound on the rough side.  It does a great job.

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Direction seems good according to the edge view, but like Drew said, it can change quickly. I would normally have the chip breaker a bit closer to the edge, but I might be too aggressive on that.

The blade seems a little cupped from what I can see in the first pic. Might need sone extra love to flatten the back, but that is just a guess.

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For the most part, there is a "feel" to using a plane. It takes quite a bit of practise to understand what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. There's no shame in that, but you really need to spend some time with scrap, and practise. You also need to tune your tool. It has t be ground the right way, your blade has to be sharp, it has to be set correctly, it needs to be held the right way, and you should never assume you know enough, very few ever do.

Ross makes a good point. In the first pic it looks as though your edge is not flat.  Are you attempting to sharpen freehand, or are you using a jig, a blade holder? If you without some experience are trying to sharpen freehand, you need to stop and buy the requsite tool to hold the blade so it becomes flat all along the edge.

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Sharpening freehand. Most of the advice I found on sharpening is pretty split between using a specific honing guide or just putting a camber on freehand without trying to hit a specific degree angle. It all seems a bit divisive to me so I just went with what I thought was the simplest approach first. I would've bought one of those honing guides but it seems like every one I see all the reviews say they are cheap crap. I'm not opposed to trying it though.

As far as actual planing goes I can plane softwood fine now and I've gotten a lot better at it and this same plane I'm showing here works great on SYP and douglas fir.

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Freehand sharpening is the way to go, once you develop the skill. I thought I had it when I first started using chisels & planes, because I can put a razor edge on a pocket knife in no time. Totally different, though. Get a cheap guide, take the time to adjust to hold your blade properly, and find out what a truly sharp edge is like. Then learn to reproduce it freehand.

IMO, the cheap guides work fine, but are not as smooth to adjust. Otherwise, they do the job.

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From the third pic down "the board" I would say you are either trying to take too deep of cut or the plane is not sharpened correctly. That pic appears to show stop and start marks vs tear out which is typically an indication of the above. While freehand is great I have OCD and with a guide and a set up block I can get the same cut every time in seconds, that works for me. Bottom line is choose a process, get really good at it, and then stick with it. There are a million ways to do it you just need one that your really good at.

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https://www.amazon.com/ATLIN-Honing-Guide-Chisels-Planer/dp/B07C9X3F98/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=plane+sharpening+guide&qid=1601320391&sr=8-5

These are cheap but work and are based off an old design. There are more complicated guides and more expensive guides but this one will get your feet wet.

Sharpening free hand it is possible to put to high of an angle on the blade causing the belly of a convex surface to contact the wood before the sharp edge does. See detail below. You'll fight and fight with this iron to take a shaving and will have  an awful time with it. Sometimes it'll cut most times it won't and you'll want to tear your hair out.

1288872634_EdgeDetail.thumb.jpg.127b6e48928059ed39c28eede658d569.jpg

I've had this happen to me while free hand sharpening the fix is to take the angle back to ~30 degrees.

Your chip breaker could also be a lot closer to the edge. Rule of thumb is as close to the edge as the thickness of shaving your planning on taking. In practice as close as you can get it with out it being overly tedious to set is best.

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To do what you are doing takes a very sharp blade that is cambered and a very thin cut.  It appears that your blade is not sharp and that you are cutting to deep.

Secondly I would not spend too much time smooth planing prior to gluing since you will just have to to do it again. 

For questonable grain situatons I use a bevel up plane with a  50 degree bevel for a planing angle fo 62 degrees. Yes it is harder to push but you are only taking the thinnest of slices. Tear out is g reatly reduced or even eliminated.  The steeper your cutting angle the more it acts like a scraper.  If you angle your planeas you push you lower the angle and increase the chances for tearout.

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So I bought a guide (same one you linked to, Chestnut) and got some polishing compound and a new diamond stone. For 3 days I spent an hour or 2 sharpening using the guide at 30 degrees and then testing out the blade. No matter how sharp I got it the blade kept skipping. So then I decided to change things up and got a Stanley replacement iron that I had and sharpened it at 25 degrees. It started cutting a little better but I still had skipping. I had been using my Kobalt plane and just out of curiosity I decided to try the same blade and chip breaker in my Amazon plane and it cut much better. I have no idea why. I am able to get some super thin fine cuts but I'm still not able to get a full length shaving. Anything else I could be missing? Feels like I'm headed in the right direction. Is it even possible to get a full length shaving from oak or is it just too tough?

 

kobalt.jpg

amazon.jpg

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It appears to me that the blade is not sharp.  Have you flattened the back of that blade? I'd suggest watching a couple YouTube video's on sharpening I learned from Rob Cosman on you tube. Here are a couple of pics I just took planing red oak with a blade that's been sharpened but is not right off the stones either. The plane you have will do the same thing so don't give up :) 

IMG_6767.JPG.48a513495374dcfe32bec3a8242a91e3.JPG

IMG_6771.JPG.2309f64234e61be1d07cea58eeb01592.JPG

IMG_6768.JPG.efe7049b5cd30834b04e85050aeeb25e.JPG

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@Meatwad, I have successfully taken full length, whispy-thin shavings from red oak, using a $9 'Windsor 33' plane from Harbor Freight. It just takes some experimentation to get your setup and your technique adjusted. 

If the plane blade can shave your arm, it should shave wood. So, look closely at the plane bodies with the cutters removed. Are the 'frogs' ground flat and adjusted to correctly support the cutting edge from beneath? Are they square to the mouth of the plane? Are the soles flat? 

I like to run the blade forward so it is clearly visible when sighting down the sole. Use the lateral adjustment lever to make the cutting edge parallel to the sole, then retract the blade until it doesn't touch wood. Slowly advance the blade while pushing the plane, until it just begins to catch. At that point, it takes VERY LITTLE adjustment to go too far, forcing the blade to dig deep, then tear out and produce skip or stutter. Scrub planes, which are intended to take deep cuts, use a heavily cambered blade to alleviate this. Imagine scooping ice cream with a spatula (flat blade) vs. a spoon (cambered blade). The flat blade requires more finesse, but can leave a slicker surface if you do it right.

Don't give up, it will come to you.

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Well, not exactly "everybody". I rarely sharpen higher than 1200 grit. But here's the catch, everybody is different, and we should be.  If I'm happy with the edge I get, then that's fine........for me. I'm a little larger with a little more bodyweight than some others, so pusing a plane or a chisel is a tad easier for me than some.  But I do use a few things I've learned over the years, that make my work less cumbersome than what you're going through. Sharpness is paramount, but the feel of the tool in use is just as important.   There's an old saying when it comes to working wood with sharp tools.  Practise, Practise and last of all, Practise.  Don't go from no knowledge to the wood you plan to make a beautiful piece from.  Practise.  You'll get the feel after you play with all the adjustments, then you get that Ah ha moment. And you won't look back,   that is until you pick up a plane you've never used before.  Ya see, they're like people, they each have a different personality.  Have fun, and Practise.

@Pkinneb made an excellent point. There are excellent videos that you can learn from.  Folks like Paul Sellers, and damn my mind just went blank.  But there are plenty.  And it won't take long to figure out who teaches you best.

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