I am using a cabinet scraper for the first time.

Re: I am using a cabinet scraper for the first tim

arw01


>There was a recent thread which tried to replicate a few month old FWW article. With buildable finishes (e.g. not oil) there was no difference in wood appearance between sanding, scraping, and planning.

If anything difference at one coat, the planned surface was a tad darker if I recall, but after normal second coat application, no one can tell the difference in the surfaces.

Sanding to 600 grit is a waste of your time for furniture, I suggest you try the same test you did stopping at 220.

Alan

no "right" answer for this question

bill tindall


>It would appear from the answers to similar questions that some woodworkers are rewarded by the challenge of attaining the final finish from a plane or scraper. While. at the other extreme the finish off a wide-belt sander is just fine. To a "customer" either could look equivalent. The "best" finish is one that suits you in terms of how you attained it and how it looks to you. These criteria may change with time. Personally, I have little patience for claims of "best" since we decided that a well executed surface preparation bounded by these extremes looks the same after applying most finishes.

Re: I am using a cabinet scraper for the first tim

Thom D


>If one is talking about scrap, then often there appears to be little difference. On real projects there often is. For instance if you scrape a chair post to final finish, it will have facets, which many people prefer. If you sand it it will tend to blend the surface. In some situations the blending is pretty important like if you sand a hard edge but scrape or plane the adjascent flat surface, it may well show up differently on the finished piece. Or you might successfully plane a very difficult panel of highly figured wood, with no tear out, but the surface might look like a fairway or green with mower marks in every direction.

It's also wood sensitive, Some woods finish more easily than others and show sanding more obviously.

The difference in finish quality depends on how far you take the sanding. real sanding on wood to 600 or above will yield a polished surface, but few people are likely to entertain it except possibly on a a lathe.

Folks like Krenov who reject sanding for some of their work, do stuff like reduce edges with files.

There is some work where the whole thing can be finished off the plane. Japanese forms are often developed that way. You are not going to get something that looks like a Malooff chair out of that process. The wood used is very important both for results but also so that the texture of the item be achieved through colour and grain contrast, moreso than edge profiles.

Where the tests and scrap are valid is for comparing the finish of the plane to the finish of the sandpaper, on identical flat surfaces. That's a fair question. Furniture is much more complicated.

Another wrinkle is the difference in results between the various sanding planing and scraping tools, when no finish coating is applied...

In practical terms the vast majority of furniture you see made by even hand tool use experts, probably has been sanded. Like 99.9%. What the hand finishing does for you is reduce the amount of sanding by 99.0%, roughly.

Respectfully disagree

Ron in Kokomo


>I sand to 400 grit then to oil two coats sanding the second coat in then do a slow build finish of tung oil, varnish, and later add beeswax. You can most definitely tell the difference between this and 220

Ron

Re: Respectfully disagree

Thom D


>For two reasons, one fair and the other not so fair. The fair one is that you have some difficulty getting good results above the 220 level without wet sanding, and not all methods allow wet sanding.

The less fair reason is because you are probably filling the surface. 200 filled might not look any worse, if it was filled with your 400 slury. But the question is whether the difference is the surface condition from sanding or filling.

Re: I am using a cabinet scraper for the first tim

Warren in Lancaster, PA


>You can apply finish to a scraped surface.

You might notice some difference in how the surfaces accept stain. If you use a stain with pigment (that gunk you stir up from the bottom), the pigment seems to lodge better on a sanded surface after wiping, giving a darker look. You might find that a water stain also darkens the sanded suface more. A sanded surface is much more likely to fuzz up from a water stain, making more sanding necessary.

Depending on your skill with the scraper, you may have minor flaws which are still noticible after finishing. Some don't mind this, some can't stand it and sand for this reason.

Re: I am using a cabinet scraper for the first tim

Ted Owen, Pittsburgh


>For furniture pieces, Frank Klausz recommends that the scraper be followed by sandpaper. He teaches that the scraper crushes the fibers, sandpaper then reopens the pores.

Best, Ted