Working green oak with metal planes
Dave Mount
>I made several ladderback chairs (per Drew Langsner's book) and am now to the stage of making and installing the back splats, which are 3/16" thick pieces of "quarter riven" (can't properly call these quartersawn) red oak. I did the green working of the legs and spindles in August, but they had to dry before getting to this stage, so I split out the blanks for the splats then and kept them frozen (until SWMBO demanded the freezer space back) or in water until now so they'd stay dead green.
Anyway, the riven blanks are about 1/2" thick on average; Langsner suggests working them down with a drawknife, but it seemed to me that I could do a better job nearly as fast with a jack plane set rank. So I waxed the bed of a jack and was successful at shaping the splats very quickly. However, when I went to steam and bend the splats the next day, I had some of that familiar black iron/oak staining.
I know I can treat the stain with oxalic acid to remove it, but is there a trick to preventing it from happening at all? Is it foolish to use a metal plane for this operation? Or would I be better off using a woodie? Some of the staining is in distinct spots, which makes me think there may have been tiny bits of metal dust that got deposited, maybe residue from sharpening. Other parts have just a light general haze, which looks more surficial and may be just transfer from the bed of the plane. That will probably sand or scrape off easily, but the "particle" type staining is down in the open grain and will probably have to be chemically removed.
Any suggestions appreciated,
Dave
Dave Mount, NE Minnesota