Is it possible?

Re: Is it possible?

John, NY

>I'm no expert but the only way i've been successful with this at all is with a very sharp plane going 45 degrees across the grain. This left me with a good finish except for the very much more shallow tearout that I then removed with a card scraper and #80 scraper.

John

Re: Is it possible?

Sean Evoy

>I did the same thing with some maple laminations on the legs of my workbench (although in my case, it was a mistake). Switching to a higher pitch blade in my Veritas 64.5 helped a bit, but I still got tear-out. In fruustration, I started hauling out old magazines, looking for tips on planing gnarly wood. Then I remembered what someone said on this board a while back, that not every problem calls for a handplane. I hauled out my cabinet scraper, sharpened it up, and felt a whole lot better about the world.

That said, I started with a fairly flat surface so I was removing a small amount of localized tearout. If you have a lot of wood to remove, have you considered a toothed blade for one of your planes?

BINGO

David Miller from Iowa

>Thanks for jogging my memory Sean. I dusted off the Union #60 (same as #12) and went to work. It'll take a while but probably not as long as I have been fettling. It won't be dead flat but it will be glass smooth.

Re: BINGO

Tom MacGregor

>After I built my bench it took a few weeks before I quit treating it like fine furniture and used it like a workbench. IMHO a flat top with a bit of tearout will outperform one that's simply smooth. You don't want thin stock to plane unevenly because of improper support, and a good flat top can help you tell when the stock you're working is where you want it.

Re: Is it possible?

Dan Clermont in Burnaby

>I wouldn"t worry about the tearout to much. Get the Bench flat and use it. Scraping and trying to remove localized tearout will only make it out of flat.

Dan Clermont in Bunrbay

Re: Is it possible?

Wiley Horne--Glendora CA

>Hello David,

My experience agrees with John, NY, and I sure what you mean about QSWO against the grain. Local tearout per se is not a big deal on a workbench, but IME flat is important. Work diagonally with the 605-1/2, from all directions, and as that progresses, make long strokes with the 607 (you can kinda slant them, too); then more diagonal at a finer cut, then more long, and it'll converge to flat. Local tearout is OK, but check for flat. This might be a good time to get a milled-edge level to check flat--you can rotate it around on its edge and figure out where you have highs and lows.

If you already are on top of this stuff, please accept my apology in advance....The flatter the bench is, the more useful it will be for things such as face-jointing and for checking whether a panel glue-up is flat or twisted. Another thing I find--it's really nice to have square and plumb front corners so you can quick-test panel glue-ups for square, and you can transfer dovetail marks much more easily, and your boards being edge jointed are plumb. End preaching.

That QSWO bench should be awesome.

Wiley