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Hand Planing Maple

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Hand Planing Maple

#1

Hand Planing Maple

Richard Gillespie

>From past experience, Maple can be difficult to work with when planing. My first experience, I tried my 12" power planer on it and it chewed it all up. I ended up taking the wood back to a former employer and using their spiral bladed planer and wide belt sander to remove the chip out.

Any more, I've been using my power planer first and then hand planing for finishing. Since my last experience with maple I've changed the blades on my power planer. My question is, has anyone had any luck planing soft maple with high angle frog planes. If so, maybe it will be a good excuse to buy a tool.

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#2

Re: Hand Planing Maple

RichD

>I've had good luck with ECE smoother on soft maple. Hard maple too, but have to sharpen more often and some tough spots.

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#3

Re: Hand Planing Maple

Jack from Maine

>I picked up a piece of tiger maple and tried to smooth it. Power planer couldn't get past the figure.Left a very rough surface. I tried a few different planes on it(#4,low angle block,#5)and the only tool that worked was my steve knight 55deg. coffin smoother. I don't own a high angle frog smoother but that's what they're designed to do also.---Crackerjack

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#4

Re: Hand Planing Maple

Steve knight

>it's wierd the way wood works. to me maple is pretty easy to plane. but since most of what I plane is tropicals that could be it (G) usualy I can do it with a 45 degree plane.

but power planing is far harder. I have to take really light passes on my planer and skew it not to get tearout.

now purpleheart with soem figure is extreamly hard to handplane but pretty easy to power plane. go figure.

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#5

Re: Hand Planing Maple

CBT

>I am working on some curly maple now. I have used my LN 4 1/2 high angle frog. It works great. I have had this plane for only 2 months so my experience with plane is limited. So far I am very happy with it. The only thing I've noticed is that HA frog makes the plane a little harder to push through the wood.

Curtis

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#6

Re: Hand Planing Maple

R.J.Whelan

>Richard ... I think York pitch is probably too much angle for soft maple.

I just prepped quite a bit a soft maple for a table and found I could get the power planer to work if I dampened the surface of the wood with a sponge about 2-3 minutes prior to running it through the planer and then tool light passes.

I used a #4 and #7 for final smoothing.

Good luck --- rj

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#7

Re: Hand Planing Maple

Chris Knight

>My LN low-angle jack works best for me on maple with squirly grain. I find straight grained stuff cuts well with any sharp plane

Chris

Re: Hand Planing Maple

#8

Damp wood. *LINK*

Robin Frierson

>I am building a second desk now with both hard and soft curly maple and have found that slightly wetting the wood, then taking a very light cut, with a very tight mouth, on the LN 4 high angle works very well. When I try to take a deeper cut it starts to tear out. When I tried my #62 I got bad tear out. I used the bronze #4 when working with damp wood so as not to get rust problems on the body, though the blade still needs to be dried off. Here is some maple I smoothed with that method on the first desk:


Maple desk

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