Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Planing Maple
Robert R. Clough - Thorncraft
>A question. Within the last year or so I have taken to using hand planes. Yes I get the irons sharpened properly, etc. However, I do have a problem planing Maple. Is this usual? The plane easist to use is a Block Plane. I should also say that I have not been able to do any woodworking from mid November until mid March due to health problems and yes, I am out of shape. I am also 75.
Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Steve Elliott
>I've been planing hard maple for 25 years, with good success until recently. The last piece of maple I bought was harder and denser than any I'd ever seen before, and I haven't found any blade or plane that will really handle it. My very best blades will cut it with difficulty for a few strokes, but then the blade is already starting to get dull. This is taking a very thin shaving, about .001" thick.
Another woodworker made a post some months ago about the trouble he was having with a piece of maple, so I think there really is a harder type that has come onto the market recently.
If you have pieces of maple from different sources (or older pieces) you might be able to find some that will plane just fine.
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Robert R. Clough - Thorncraft
>Thanks Steve. The piece in question is relatively new (to me) and was purchased as hard Maple.
I have had little trouble until reccently.
Howdy Rob
Bob Hutchins in central Texas
>Wondered where you'd been! Hope the health problems were minor and are headed rapidly into the dustbin of history.
BobH
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Frank D. in Montreal
>Just to add to what Steve said,
I don't have nearly as much experience as he, but I still plane a lot of maple, and I find a really sharp blade (with thin shavings) is imperative. I only get about a half hour's work out of a freshly sharpened blade, after that I usually start sliding backwards intsead of the plane moving forward. I also get some pieces that really don't want to be planed, so I end up using my #8 for everything including smoothing.
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
GolfSteve in Calgary
>Half hour??? I get about five to 10 minutes between sharpenings on maple. I find maple the most difficult of the common domestic woods to work with.
On cherry maybe half an hour.
How about other people's experience?
Re: That may of been me...
Dale Lenz-Tahlequah, OK
>with the maple post several months ago. The best idea that worked is a sharp iron with an oh so tight mouth, very little tear-out, for about 10~15 minutes....Dale
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Frank D. in Montreal
>5 to 10 minutes! That sounds really short to me Steve. What kind of blades do you use? Are you talking just about smoothing? I could see such a short time for smoothing if you want a perfect surface and are really picky. Hard maple is the wood I use the most, and if I start the day preparing stock with a jointer, two jacks, two smoothers and a block, I'm usually good till lunch.
Nice natural lighting on your bench!
Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida
>
Re: Planing Maple
Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida
>Exactly what problems are you having while planing maple? If you can narrow the scope of your difficulties, perhaps a solution can be found.
Don - getting ready to buy some maple for the bench project.
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
GolfSteve in Calgary
>LN blades. I am really picky, but this doesn't enter the equation. After about 5-10 minutes, the blade just doesn't bite anymore - it skates along the surface.
Re: Planing Maple
Patrick Gibbons, Bayou City, TX
>I've worked with a lot of maple over the last three or four years and have found hard maple and soft maple both to have their difficulties. I ran into a board of soft maple recently that was the toughest and hardest of all the maples I have ever encountered. Every blade put to it; chisel, saw, plane, scraper, had great difficulty cutting on it. This board had many changes of grain and much mineral streak in it. Sometimes low angle works well on maple but more often than not it digs into the wood even more. High angle works better most of the time. Sometimes I have had better luck with results using a longer, heavier plane, even for smoothing. Often one has to change the direction of the plane on patches of the wood where the grain changes. Most often I use the scraper to finish off. A cabinet scraper will work sometimes and sometimes not, in which case I change to hand scrapers and go whatever direction works best. Maple is challenging, no doubt about it.
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Todd Stock
>Rock maple or curly hard maple can be tough, but my blades work a good long time between sharpenings (a couple of sharpenings on a medium sized project). I think blade alloys such as A2 provide some advantages here in harder and more abrasive woods, but a really sharp blade in a well tuned plane is really the important factor.
Whatever sharpening system/plane you use should give you sub .001 shavings in rock or curly - if you're not getting that result, either the tool or your sharpening needs some work.
Re: Planing Maple
Robert R. Clough - Thorncraft
>I do appreciate the comments. I plan to get a new Hock blade etc but have not yet. I am using the original blade - probably 70, 80 yrs old now. Belonged to my Grandfather. I have two, that one and a newer Stanley. Neither is really what I call good but they have one good quality - they are paid for.
I do not have many planes as I have just started using them after 50 yrs (no power cord, no good!!! you know what I mean - stupid) but I do have the 4 1/2 and a transitional jointer my Grandfather purchased about 1900. I put in a new mouth on that one.
Anyway, thanks.
Hock blades
Jorge Castaneda ~ Downeast Maine
>I have Hock blades in my #5 1/2 and #8 and they work well a good half hour in very hard maple, The # 4 with a L-N blade is good for 20 minutes, the mass of the # 8 is and asset here. Sometimes I spray a fine mist of water every few swaps and that helps.
In regular maple, my Miller's Falls with their superb original blades do quite well, all of them,#3, #4, #5, #6, & #7 equivalents.
Jorge
Re: Hock blades
GolfSteve in Calgary
>So what am I doing wrong? There's no way I get twenty minutes of planing on a single sharpening.
I sharpen on a 1000 stone until I raise a burr. I switch to a 8000 stone, raise the angle a bit to get a microbevel, and hone until the burr falls off or disappears. I reflatten my 8000 stone, then flip the iron over and hone the backside. The blade is sharp enough to shave hair off the back of my hand, and on maple I get nice fluffy light shavings.
Five-10 minutes later, the iron starts to dull, requiring me to advance the blade a bit to keep the iron biting. Five minutes later, the plane just skates on the surface of the maple, and I have to stop to resharpen.
Any advice?
Re: Hock blades
Dan Donaldson
>What angle is your primary bevel? If it is too shallow, that might be making the edge too weak to withstand the forces from extremely hard wood.
Re: Hock blades
GolfSteve in Calgary
>Primary angle is about 25-30 degrees (It's about the same as what the iron originally came with). I've hollow ground the iron a few times - whenever the bevel becomes too large. Thus, there is a hollow grind at about 25-30 degrees, a primary bevel several degrees higher, and a microbevel several degrees higher than that.
On the 4-1/2 plane I use a high angle frog. On the #8 I use a regular angle frog. The blade on the 4-1/2 seems to last longer than the #8 blade - but not much longer.
I thought for a while that my freehand sharpening technique might be the cause of this, so I gave jig sharpening another chance. Sharpening with the jig made no difference in sharpness or the the edge longevity.
Blade Wear *LINK*
Steve Elliott
>Your experience of less than twenty minutes of planing on hard maple for each sharpening sounds about right to me. I've been testing blades for edge retention, and there are some blades out there that will hold an edge significantly longer than A2 or O1, but they're also much more demanding to sharpen.
Brent Beach has done wear tests on a large number of blades, and his test of a Hock A2 blade ended after 800 lineal feet. His best-performing blade, an Academy Saws M2, lasted for 1600 LF, but M2 is unusually difficult to grind and needs to be honed with diamond or chromium oxide to achieve a really sharp edge.
A twenty-minute session of planing could easily take more than 800 LF of shavings, so you're probably doing just fine with sharpening. For planing maple, I'd want the final bevel angle to be at least 32 degrees, though, to avoid microchipping. For use with the high angle frog you will want at least a 34 degree final angle.
Brent's blade testing site is linked below.
Brent Beach's Blade Tests
Re: Hock blades
Frank D. in Montreal
>Dan might have hit it. I kept my bevels at around 25� (what they come with, I use mostly LN) for a while but changed to 30 with a 33� microbevel. It might be a good idea to change and see what happens.
If you get fluffy shavings your sharpening should be fine. The hair test I find isn't a great indicator because a burr can shave hair too (I can shave my hair with a chisel that needs sharpening) but I guess it doesn't really matter.
I get more consistent results than I used to by going a little longer on the 1000 once the burr appears. Sometimes even with a burr the worn, rounded edge isn't completely ground off (by the time a blade skates over maple IME the edge hasn't broken down by chipping but has rounded off).
I also take the burr off the back after each stone with the 8000. I use a 4000 to start the microbevel and just polish off with the 8000 but a lot of people go from 1000 to 8000 so that should be fine as long as you cut deep enough into the metal to get all the 1000 scratches off.
Anyways, just some food for thought. A steeper bevel might solve the problem.
Re: Hock blades
William Duffield, on the Cohansey
>Do you pick up the plane for the return stroke? If not, you are decreasing your clearance angle at a much higher rate you would be if you only ran it in one direction against the wood. A symptom of a clearance angle that is too small is skating. The lower surface of the blade gets a lot more wear when being dragged backwards across the wood than it does when the cutting edge is pushed forwards into the wood. On the forward stroke, most of the wear is to the upper surface of the blade. As the cutting angle increases due to wear of the upper surface, the first effects you should notice are increased resistance to forward force. With a bevel down blade, this eventually results in increased chatter as the blade flexes, and increased tearout as the mouth opening increases. With a bevel up plane, there is less tendency to chatter due to blade flex, and with an adjustable mouth you can easily continue planing a bit longer by tightening the mouth opening.
I wonder if there might be some corelation between dragging the plane backwards vs. lifting it and preference for bevel up vs. bevel down planes?
Re: Hock blades
GolfSteve in Calgary
>I measured my blade angles tonight (after cutting 8 mortises for my bench base; average time per 3" long by 1" deep x 1/2" wide mortise was 15-20 minutes).
The blades are hollow ground at 30 degrees. Primary bevel is 35 degrees. Secondary bevel is at 37 degrees.
And, no, I'm not consistent about lifting the plane on the return stroke. I've often wondered about clearance angle vs. sharpening angle vs. frog angle, but haven't taken the time to look things up.
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Alan Hamilton
>Robert,
Are you saying your prayers? Are you holding your mouth right? Is your shop floor perfectly level? Are the legs of your bench made of pine? Are you married to someone whose middle name begins with an 'E' and has six letters? Do you have left-handed or right-handed pencils?
But seriously... There are few planeing woes that cannot be remedied with a truly sharp iron, a light cut, good technique, and a plane that's well set up.
N.B., a truly sharp iron, a properly tuned plane, et al. I was once helping a friend who had troubles much like yours. He assured me he had sharpened his irons correctly. Perhaps; maybe he had used all the right implements and had gone through the right procedures. But when I checked, his edges were not very keen. He had done the right things, but nevertheless had not gotten his tools very sharp.
I am NOT saying your irons aren't sharp. I am saying to go back to the beginning and before all else, first and foremost, check the fundamentals. It's much the same as if your car won't start, first make sure you have gasoline.
Alan
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Robert R. Clough - Thorncraft
>I agree and I have found a "possible" problem. I now must redo the chipper. I found that it is not a perfect fit. And, yes, I do not trust the blades being truly sharp. So, back to basics.
Perhaps I should also get a newer plane. As an historian and as one who lives in a housefull of antiques, I sometimes get enamored of aged things and, well, you know what that can mean!
Re: Some Maple is Extra-Hard
Alan Hamilton
>Robert,
I do indeed. And speaking as one who is too rapidly becoming an antique himself, I would counsel taking careful stock of the tools you have before casting them aside for something newer.
If the planes you have are good quality to begin with, they can be more than worth the effort to put them right. "New" doesn't mean "better" after all, but then neither does "old."
Alan