Cherry pits

Hate to tell you...

...but I suspect that it comes down to variability between different pieces of wood, whether it happens to be 4/4, 8/4 or whatever. Could have been from a different tree that grew with more interlocked or wavy grain. You just have to be able to shift on the fly to be able to handle anything that comes along. On the most obstreperous woods, sometimes thickness sanding is the only way out.

If you have a small, high-speed planer, it ought to give you excellent surfaces on any kind of cherry. A bigger planer is more prone to tearout.

Regarding your hand planes, much depends on how sharp and how well tuned they are, as well as the depth of cut. With a blisteringly sharp plane iron and a very fine pass, you ought to be able to shave frog hairs off that wood, even curly or gnarly wood.

Ellis

Re: Cherry pits

Lynn,

If you're just trying to clean up the surface, try a scraper. A nice heavy 6" card scraper will smooth things out without tear out. Of course, the going is a bit slow if you have a lot of material to take off... (in which case renting time on an abrasive planer starts to sound pretty ogood).

If you need to take off a lot of material (and you don't have or like the abrasive planer option), get close to your final dimensions with your table saw, bandsaw, or planer (if you have a 12" 'portable' planer, sneak up on your dimensions with very light passes), then go at it with the scraper.

Hope this helps,

Nick

Re: Cherry pits

Lynn,

While the other posts have stated many good ideas, ther is something else you can look at. If I had a board in front of me I could show you what I mean, however, words will have to suffice.

Look at the side of the board you are trying to plane. Look at the grain pattern as to how it comes up to the surface you are planing. If the grain comes up to the face and points in the direction of where you are starting your cut from, flip the board end for end and try planing in the opposite direction.

Think of the grain in a board as a series of laminated sheets coming up to the surface at an angle. When power or hand planing a board, you want to cut in a direction so that you are pushing the layers down, not lifting them up.

I hope this makes sense, if not, let me know and I will try to come up with a diagram or photograph of what I am trying to verbalize.

Chris

Dry Wood

Fellows,

What I was thinking is that sometimes wood becomes too dry. We have had a long hot summer with 60 or more days in the 90's and many in the 100's. I suspect the troublesome wood is too dry. I recall reading an article where troublesome wood can sometimes be improved by increasing the humidity. I resharpen my plane and tried to shave some hair of a frog.

I tried scraping but keep getting the same results. Sanding is just making the pieces smaller.

My plane is working fine except on this wood and I believe it is too dry. I have given up an just stained it. It looks like shit but my granddaughter can live with it.

I do think I will try dampening the scraps and see if they behave better.

Thanks for the tips.