Sand, scrape or plane? FWW article

I'm not surprised by the results

bill tindall

>In the extreme if one suspends a white solid, for example silica, in a liquid of exactly the same refractive index, the solid disappears and the solution appears clear. Even when the match is not perfect, the solid becomes less white and less visible accordingly. Pour water on sugar to see the result (but observe before it dissolves!).

Finish is going to do the same for the surface of the wood. It will fill in the spaces among wood particles-shreds-whatever. There will be less light scattered from these wood surfaces and hence they will appear less obvious or not obvious at all. Furthermore, much of the light returning to the observer will be coming from reflections and scatter from the surface of the finish and not the wood, so again the surface roughness of the wood becomes less important in what is observed.

This same effect comes into play with sanding to extreme fineness. Beyond a certain surface roughness the finished surface will look the same no matter how fine one sands.

This contorversy of planed vs sanded is only of importance to persons usining minimalist finishes, as demonstrated by the experiment described.

Re: I'm not surprised by the results

JL

>What about chatoyance? Do you think that a sanded surface will reveal as much as a planed or scraped surface when finished out?

Re: Sand, scrape or plane? FWW article

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>I was baffled by the author's abrading every finish after minimal build up. For example, what purpose did it serve to sand the oiled finish after just one coat (wiped on and wiped off), if not to make the planed or the scraped surface look more like the sanded one? I seems odd to make a clean planed surface only to scuff it up later. It is no wonder they could't see a difference.

Re: I'm not surprised by the results

HC Sakman

>It certainly would! It depends on how patient you're with grits and how high you're willing to go up. (800G or 1000G will give you the mother of all chatoyances! You just need to get there grit by grit.)

Chico...

Re: Sand, scrape or plane? FWW article

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Why bafflement? I saw it as blatant damage control. Their big advertisers must be getting really worried about the increasing popularity of hand tools, and justifiably worried, to my way of thinking. At least, for a while, they figured they could sell lots of sandpaper to the SS� adherents, but even that is changing. Even the fastest water stone takes aeons to need replacing vs. their most popular disposable abrasives. For further edification, you should look at how much of 3M's woodworking catalog is devoted to safety products.

you must have been tired

bill tindall

>I would venture that commercial operations account for the vast majority of abrasives sold and if anything wide belt sanding has only increased useage. Now I am seeing more lumber abrasively planed rather than knife planed. If everyone that bought a LV or LN plane boycotted sanding I doubt it would show up on anyone's sales figures carried to 6 significant figures. 3M's problem is competition, not vanishing demand.

Re: Sand, scrape or plane? FWW article

Darrell in Oakville

>The thing I found odd about the article was that he explained all about taking a "new" scraper and going through all the honing, polishing, and burnishing steps to get to where he had the scraper ready to use. Made it sound like using a scraper involved a lot of setup time. Neglected to mention that the setup was a one-time thing. Same with the hand plane. He lapped the sole, honed the iron (OK *that* I understand) and closed up the mouth. Your go-to smoother should already BE set up. Again, it sounds like using a plane takes lots of prep work.

And how long did it take for each of the surface prep methods? Given that the results are almost identical, the most important piece of information that could be gleaned was how much effort it took. Maybe I'm too practical or too lazy, but a big part of the reason I plane or scrape is because I find those methods faster than sanding. You're going over the surface once with the tool, instead of 4 times.

Darrell

Wood Hoarder, Blade Sharpener, and Occasional Tool User

Bull's eye!

Matti Kuikka

>

Re: you must have been tired

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Yeah, I'm definitely one of those paranoids who just loves conspiracy theories. I'm not sure I understand why 3M, Norton and Mirka would think it necessary to spend that many pages to gang up on a bunch of wimpy knuckle-draggers. Most of the abrasive market is going to China along with the rest of the furniture industry, anyway, isn't it? Maybe the class strugle is really between FWW and AWW and Wood vs. PW and Woodwork?

Timesavers have their advantages and disadvantages. They're quieter than planers. Dust control is a bit easier, because the particulates are smaller. They don't leave the scalloped, burnished surface that a planer leaves. They don't tear out. It's a lot easier to get really thin stock out of them. But, you have to ask yourself whether you would dare to put a hand plane to a surface that has been run roughshod over by an abrasive belt.

Hand Planing after Widebelt Sanding

Steve Elliott

>I don't mind using my best infill plane on a surface that has come off a well-tuned Timesaver sander. In fact, the best illustration I've seen of the superior quality of a planed surface came from doing just that.

The sanded surface had been through a two-belt sander, with the second belt at about 150x. My plane was set to take about a .001" shaving, and the first strokes just removed stringy wisps of wood, the highest points on the rough sanded surface. Then the plane began to take off the tops of the humps left by each rotation of the belt. When the humps were gone, the shavings finally started to be continuous, but seemed to be split along their length because there were scratches deeper than .001 in the wood left by the coarser sanding belt. Finally I got perfect shavings from the plane, and the surface of the wood was glossy and smooth.

Of course the usual procedure is to random-orbit sand after the widebelt, so the comparison above wasn't with a finish-sanded surface. But it sure revealed the limitations of widebelt sanding.

All that said, for the kind of production work I do for a living I like having a widebelt sander in the shop. It does an important job quickly and reliably. I reserve my planes for the tasks a sander can't do as well.

By the way, widebelt sanding doesn't leave grit in the wood to any significant degree. I really don't worry about damage to my plane blade from it.

The Honor of the Guild :-)

Dave (Arlington, VA)

>I also read with interest the FWW December 2005 article by Ari Tuckman entitled, �Sand, scrape, or plane � which is best?�

I am acquainted with Ari � though not well. We are both members of the Washington Woodworking Guild. I am pleased that while questions have been raised about Ari�s research methods, and about the motives of the editors of FWW for including the article (full disclosure: I don�t know any of the FWW editors), I am grateful to see that no one here at Wood Central has impugned his integrity. Because I have met Ari, and have handled the boards (at least the mahogany boards) under discussion in the article, I thought I might share a bit of background, and perhaps some perspective.

Ari is a young man � at least younger than I am. He has a passion for woodworking. I am pretty sure he is a hobbyist woodworker, or at least I haven�t heard him talk of clients, commissions and the like. He uses both power and hand tools � as do many of here at WC. He seems to genuinely enjoy hand tools.

I can�t remember for sure when � but maybe a year or so ago, Ari brought the mahogany boards into the Guild meeting for our �show and tell� session. They looked like the ones in the FWW article, but I can�t be positive. He did not have any cherry boards with him for his presentation. The mahogany boards were not only taken from the same board, but a section of the board was ripped into three lengths to try to ensure that the characteristics of the wood would be as similar as possible.

He passed them around for the Guild members to inspect. Speaking for myself (a novice woodworker), while I could tell a difference between the UNFINISHED sections of the board (as compared to the sanded, scraped and planed surfaces), and I could tell a difference between the wax, the shellac, and the oil section of each board � I, too, could not tell any difference between the three oiled surfaces, the three wax surfaces, or the three shellac surfaces. They all looked alike to me. No one else at the Guild meeting � as best I can recall � was willing to stand up and say they could tell a difference either � or guess which was which, and the Guild includes professional cabinetmakers.

As far as Ari was concerned, he was showing this to us because he was SURPRISED at the findings. When he conducted this little experiment, he expected there to be a difference, but didn�t find one. I certainly did not detect any desire or intention on his part of undermining the use of hand tools. However, he knew that many felt that a raw wood surface prepared with hand tools would yield a better finished surface. He was simply testing that hypothesis � I think expecting to find it true � only to find that it did not appear to be true.

Now just because Ari is a nice guy, he like hand tools, and he convinced me that he was trying to be very careful with his research methodology � doesn�t mean he succeeded. That, I think is Warren�s (in Lancaster, PA) point.

Before going on to discuss Warren�s point, let me hasten to add that from reading Warren�s other posts, I suspect that Warren has forgotten more about woodworking than I have learned. This is a point I am happy to concede�ESPECIALLY when it comes to finishes.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to note that, at least in terms of the oil (which Warren singles out for comment) Ari says in the article, �Following the manufacturer�s instructions, I applied three coats with a rag, scuffed-sanded the first and second coats with P220-grit sandpaper after they were dry.� Leaving aside for a moment the question of the �best� way to apply wipe-on-oil, it seems to me that following the manufacturer�s instructions is a pretty sound research methodology � from the point of view of the repeatability of results.

I would also note that Bob Flexner in the November 2005 issue of Popular Woodworking (pp. 74-75) also appears to recommend sanding between applications of wipe-on-oil. But Flexner appears to recommend sanding most everything � so perhaps we should take his recommendations with a grain of salt. I don�t know.

Perhaps I am WAY off base here, but it seems to me that Ari�s article leaves us with two possible conclusions: (1) he is right � and the way one prepares a board (sand, scrape or plane) does not affect the final appearance of the wood, assuming your are going to finish it; or (2) (following a line of reasoning from Warren�s question) the specific technique(s) used in applying a finish is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to ensuring that the �benefits� of certain surface preparation methods (e.g. scraping and planning) are carried through and reflected in the final appearance of the wood � after finishing. In other words, not just any finishing techniques will do � especially for hand tool users who want their use to be reflected in the surface appearance of their finished pieces.

It seems to me that Ari has provided a reasonable approach to the question, and come to some reasonable conclusions. Anyone interested in ripping some more boards, scraping, sanding and planing them and applying your own special finishing techniques to see if they make a difference? If some one does, perhaps they could ship them off to Chris Schwartz and he will publish their findings :-)

Of course, none of this addresses the question of why FWW would chose to pick up this article � other than Ari�s a nice guy, and he was making an effort to test an interesting hypothesis. There, of course, could be more sinister motives :-)

Regards �

Dave

Very well put.

Jonathan Kaplan (OR)

>You note that:

"Perhaps I am WAY off base here, but it seems to me that Ari�s article leaves us with two possible conclusions: (1) he is right � and the way one prepares a board (sand, scrape or plane) does not affect the final appearance of the wood, assuming your are going to finish it; or (2) (following a line of reasoning from Warren�s question) the specific technique(s) used in applying a finish is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to ensuring that the �benefits� of certain surface preparation methods (e.g. scraping and planning) are carried through and reflected in the final appearance of the wood � after finishing. In other words, not just any finishing techniques will do � especially for hand tool users who want their use to be reflected in the surface appearance of their finished pieces."

This seems to me to be exactly right. As Bill put it, the differences will likely be most (or only) apparent with minimalist finishes, and/or finishes applied with very particular techniques, etc.

Thanks, btw, for such a careful post!

jk

Re: planing

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>It really doesn't mean much to me if my piece looks the same after finishing regardless if it was planed or sanded. Therefore, the results of the article really didn't mean a whole lot to me. There is a large difference in the quality of a piece built by someone that knows how to use and sharpen hand tools. I can see the difference in the items I build now and the items I built ten years ago plain as night and day, and that is what really counts in my opinion.

Re: Hand Planing after Widebelt Sanding

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I was extrapolating my experiences with fracturing and release of abrasive particles from a ROS and other hand held sandpapers to the belts on the abrasive planer. The few projects on which I have used the latter, I did not subsequently use a handplane to complete the smoothing. (Different shop; different practices.) I therefore gladly stand corrected, based on your experiences, and would even consider bringing one of them into my own shop. The timesaver belts I have used do appear to wear out much more slowly than other papers, so it seems reasonable that significantly less abrasive would be deposited in the wood.

This brings up a question: One must assume that different abrasive belts, with different formulations, and by different manufacturers, have different characteristics. Which would, and would not, be appropriate for a shop like yours, where the timesaver is followed by smoothing with a handplane?

ask you abrasive supplier tech service

bill tindall

>The Klingspor Industiral Abrasive catalog lists a wide selection of abrasive particles, bonding material and backing that can be combined for optimum performance in specific applications- metal, wood, heavy cut, finish cut, roller diameter, etc. Most of these belt products have a bonding overcoating of some polymer stuff which by in large permanently bonds the particles to the backing so the "rocks" don't fall off. The abrasive sheets we use for hand sanding or ROS sanding typically lack this bonding over-coat.

Never-the -less the abrasive particles can fracture and I would have thought an abraded wood surface would contain some grit. But I trust Steve's observation, so apparently they are well stuck. Learn something every day....

Widebelt Abrasives

Steve Elliott

>My best guess here is that any loose particles of abrasive on a widebelt are removed as soon as wood passes over the surface of the belt. Unlike a random orbital sander which mostly just refines a surface, the widebelt removes significant quantities of wood and this puts lots of force on the abrasive particles. A fresh belt probably does leave a few particles.

The point of my post was to describe the "defects" of the surface produced by a widebelt sander. The parallel ripples produced by successive revolutions of the belt aren't easy to see on light-colored woods. I was surprised by the depth of the scratches left after sanding with 150 grit. The defects must have been several thousandths of an inch deep, because that's how many strokes of the plane it took to get through them.

Over the years I've worked in about a dozen shops and most of them have discouraged use of hand planes. The reason is that planes are just a lot slower for most tasks. Shops want to see their power equipment used effectively, so that tuning up joints and refining surfaces isn't needed. Since almost all projects end up being stained and finished, even a hand-planed surface will need final sanding to make it accept stain uniformly. And as the Fine Woodworking article points out, the appearance after finishing is almost the same.

Planes are my hobby. They're wonderful tools, and sometimes they come in handy at work, too.

I can't believe how Norton's new.....

HC Sakman

>....3X sandpapers shed considerable amount of particles, real fast. It seems like "3X" meant to refer to particle shedding speed, not sanding.

BTW, I don't think it sands any faster than others either. I really like 3M products, but they are hard to get here.

Chico...

yet another consideration

bill tindall

>I put the first coat of finish on an ash Krenov style cabient today. I lost patience with the "classic" approach, my scraper skills not being honed to perfection, and finish sanded the smudges and dings off with 220 paper. While a hand plane has largely replaced 100 grit paper for these small projects, I don't see the finer grits going away any time soon.

Before applying the finish I cranked up the compressor and dusted. What I observed was when the wood was thoroughly dusted, and that took some effort even with the air assult I was using, the surface looked more and more like it did before sanding (it had been previously hand planed). If you don't own an air compressor you have never seen what the wood looks like after sanding. That dull look is dust stuck in the wood pores.

Re: The Honor of the Guild :-)

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>Thanks for a very thoughtful post, Dave. I suppose it would be possible to come up with a finishing schedule designed make the sanded surface look bad, but that would not really be fair either.

I am reminded of a test a man did in Vermont about 25 years ago. He took grade A maple syrup, grade C maple syrup, and flavored corn syrup (something like Log Cabin), to his local country store and had people do taste tests. The corn syrup won out and the grade A (the most expensive) was last. But of those few people who could identify all three syrups by taste, every one chose grade A as the best.

Why? Maybe this is why...

john jesseph

>Stir up a little controversy, get all the internet boards buzzing, maybe sell some more magazines....

I think the article's concept could be expanded to various finishes and timbers, and see which ones make a difference and which won't. It won't have too much effect on what I do...

Good point....

HC Sakman

>For a magazine in that caliber, I found this article to be just a "filler" article.

Different woods, different styles and designs demand different approaches for "optimum" (if not "perfect") results. How you get there is not a straight road that takes vision, real sense of style and accumulated knowledge (Hey, that is experience, isn't it? ;-) to drive.

Chico...

A very good point

Clay C in Miami

>I haven't seen the article yet (presumably it's waiting for me in Miami, among the ruins - I'll be back in a coupla days), so don't know what was done there. But, in the process of building a drawer-on-stand currently, I did a little test. After sanding (to 320, IIRC), I took three small test pieces (all after blowing/shaking off all the dust I could by hand/mouth). One I blew the dust off with the compressor, one I wiped down with mineral spirits, and one I wiped with a tack cloth.

Even after the finish went on, it was night and day - the mineral spirits was a little better than the tack cloth, but the compressed-air-blown surface was far clearer with visibly more distinct grain (and pores). I have always tried to do this (compressed air) anyway, but after seeing that test, I will be more careful to be sure and do it every single time.

Incidentally, I tried this a second time after doing the pore-filling, on a between-finish-coats sanding (I divided the originally-air-blown test piece into three for this test). The results were the same, but the difference wasn't nearly as striking as on raw wood - this is logical, since this time there were fewer/smaller pores and much less dust to begin with. But again, it was enough difference that from now on I'll use the air religiously, after any sanding at all.

What's the consensus? Does everyone who uses sandpaper (and has a compressor) do this? For this piece (the stand) I used a black pore filler, but if I had wanted to fill 'neutrally' and was working a piece that didn't have grain/figure I wanted to keep clear, this did make it obvious how much pore-filling happens with sanding dust, and presumably the result is the same (or more so) when wet-sanding to a slurry with an oil finish to fill pores. Having seen this result, though, I'd be much less likely now to do the oil-slurry-fill (which I've only done a few times) on anything with a nice grain or figure - I'll use a 'real' pore filler from now on.

I'd take pics (I'm sure the difference would be visible in picturess), but all the test scraps went up in smoke last Wed, at a shop-open-house-party bonfire.

Clay