plane scrape or sand?

Re: plane scrape or sand?

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Re: plane scrape or sand?

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>Monday night was warm enough that I worked in the shop without turning the heat on. I am building a medium sized cabinet with 5 drawers in it as a gift for someone. I am building the drawers first, and then fitting the carcase to them, because the drawers must hold a specific item. I never cut all my parts for a project first; I normally only cut the parts I need for the sub-assembly I am putting together.

I had cut all the drawer box parts saturday morning, out of material that had been setting in my rack for more than four years probably. Some of it was prefinished milled drawer molding stock I had gotten back when I was building kitchen cabinets full time, and it was really rough. The milling marks on it from the molder could be seen from Chicago I bet, and the finish on it was terrible. I have a large air compressor and a Dynabrade air sander that I used for building kitchen cabinets. The compressor is in my shop, and keeps up with the sander but runs a lot while the sander is working. The sander makes very fine dust that gets over everything, and vibrates in such a way that many people have gotten carpel tunnel syndrome from using them. MOnday night I could have chosen to get out my air sander and sand those drawer box sides. After all, according to FWW there is no visible difference after they are done, right? Well of course there is a difference. A sander follows the contour of the wood; a hand plane does not. A sander takes out the soft parts of the wood more so than the hard parts of the wood. Yes, it would be possible to sand wood in such a way that a person can't tell whether it was sanded or planed, especially small pieces, but such is not normally the case. Besides the fact that it took less time for me to plane my drawer sides than it would have taken to sand them, I had much more fun planing than sanding. I sharpened a jack plane with a very slight camber, and used a #604-1/2 smoothing plane with a Hock iron. My air compressor never kicked on once. A few passes in the right places with the jack plane removed the slight bows, and then the smoothing plane comes across and puts the finishing touch on it. If it was an exterior piece I would probably take a small sanding block and smooth it just a bit before finishing, but for drawer box sides, they will never see a piece of sandpaper until the seal coat gets smoothed.

99.5% of the people in this world will never be able to tell that those drawer box sides were planed instead of sanded; that really is not even close to the point.

Consistent with my experience

bill tindall

>I never could tell any difference for the kinds of finish I use, which are all finishes that build a coating-lacquer, conversion varnish, shellac. I suspect this general conclusion may not hold for minimilist finishes where the surface of the wood is primarly responsible for the luster(luster may not be technically the best word, but you get the idea).

Moses has it exactly correct. There are many reasons to plane or scrape without having to justify the choice by appearance. Personally, if the project is small and the wood cooperative, I will plane it, for convenience. However, we would never have seen kitchen cabinets on the wall if they all had to be planed instead of sanded. There are occasions where productivity is not an insignificant issue. I personally don't regard products produced by one of these approaches any more noble than the other. If someone asks I tell how something was finsihed, otherwise I let the appearance of the product speak for itself.

When wood is sanded, the dust settles into the wood pores where it scatters incident light and gives the surface a dull, dead appearance. When a planed surface is compared to this sanded surface the planed surface is clearly preferred, and sells a lot of expensive planes. But it is a leap to assume this difference will remain after a finish is applied that builds a coating. I don't even see much difference between a well sanded surface that is well dusted and a planed one, other than my well sanded surfaces are smoother.

I have been doing a lot of turning of late (Christmas presents). So as to not destroy crisp details I don't sand some parts of turnings, while adjacent surfaces may be be sanded. A well turned surface is not different from a planed one. Once a coat of shellac is applied I can't see a difference even when the two preparations are adjacent.

But the bottom line is to do your own evaluation. The data provided in the article now justify doing the evaluation, as one can no longer just accept the oft repeated opinion that planed will be better. If, upon evaluation, one sees a superior surface by one approach or the other, then use it, quietly.

Re: plane scrape or sand?

CFreeze

>Which I use depends on what I'm doing, and what wood I'm working. I prefer to work with hand tools and thus plane the wood when I can, but I'll use the random orbit sander if planing is impractical (like on plywood or something). I have a number of cabinet scrapers and use them when necessary, but I try to keep their use to a minimum.....they CAN work well, but the amount of work I get out of them doesn't compare well to the amount of time it takes to prepare them for use.

One thing to consider is what wood you're working. I happen to be building a cabinet out of butternut right now, and the wood hates being sanded or scraped. Planing is the only way to get a really smooth surface that shows off the grain of the wood (something that can be said for many woods).

Been thinking about that one for a long time

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>We had a discussion on this a few weeks ago, and somehow I felt like the issue hadn't been nailed down.

I read the article again, and I will offer here an possible explanation for the similar appearance on the samples of the different methods after doing the finishing:

I think the similitude in the finished product is a result of the finishing technique. With the oil the author put on a couple coats, then used a grey pad, which is roughly equivalent to 220 grit paper. Since oil is a "in the wood" finish, using a grey pad will abrade the wood as well as the finish. The end result is as if he sanded all three samples, therefore eliminating the superior appearance of the planed and scraped surfaces.

The oil-varnish mix, should come out a bit better, as it builds on the wood somewhat, but it's still a thin finish, and he uses 220 paper to smooth between coats, if my memory serves me right, so in all probability the wood gets abraded to some extent. Again, the advantage of the planed surface gets lost.

The shellac results are a bit baffling, because, based on the application method it should have built a thick enough coating to prevent sandpaper from making contact with the wood. Maybe it's a peculiarity of shellac itself, I don't know.

Bottom line, I believe the conclusion of the article is due to the application methods used. The author used the "recommended" application methods by his own admission, and I believe these methods assume that the wood is sanded, not planed or scraped. If one were to skip the sanding between coats I would tend to believe that the planed surfaces would look significantly better.

That's my theory...

DC