Cross-grain Planing successes

[C. in Indy]

With Fall coming in, I've started to feel the woodworking itch again.

I had a slab of rift-sawn red oak that will become 2 matched cabinet doors, "one of these days".   The wood has tricky grain and it tried to 'steer' the resaw-bandsaw its own way a few times.   It is easier to edge-joint than face-joint 4 rough-cut boards.   So I glued up the pairs and then started facing them each after the glue dried.  Reversing grain was semi-manageable, but then I thought, "why be a hero"?   Cross-grain planing is a very grain-tolerant method, and I did most of it with a standard-angle block plane.   Only toward the end did I go back to planing with the grains, and it felt then sort of like going over "toothed" wood, in the best sense.

Here is today's outcome in red oak:

   


Here is what I worked on 2 years ago, with lovely 'mahogany' culled from a stack of planks at a big-box store.  This was also very finicky wood that responded well to cross-grain planing.

   



Happy woodworking!
Chris

[barryvabeach]

Chris, nice work.  I find I go cross grain , usually at an angle, when I first start to flatten, and find that works for me.

[C. in Indy]

That matched thin oak, from the original post...   Ideas were not lining up for a cabinet, but a need for a small valet-size box did arise.

So, it's in the rough proportioning and rabbeting stage.  Most of the rabbets were wasted out with my drill press, but then the fun part of using the "right hand"* skew plane was next.            

*I saw in a recent Philip1231 swap-n-sale posting that these planes are misnamed.  Actually I can go for the existing naming if my workpiece is in a vise.  If my workpiece is on the shooting board, then I agree they are seemingly named wrong

   

More to follow in the next months of fun...

Chris

[Derek Cohen]

I may traverse across the grain, but only to flatten a face, and not to smooth it. A double iron or high cutting angle with the grain manages the smoothing. Cross grain smoothing leaves a roughened surface. Am I missing something here?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[C. in Indy]

Hi Derek,

Certainly for 95% of my boards I go with the grain.   There are occasional exceptions where I like across-the-grain planing better.

The use of across-the-grain planing to avoid tear-out, I remembered seeing in a Christopher Schwarz blog quite a few years ago (on a search, it looks like it was 2008).  I had tucked it in my memory, sort of the same place where I tuck the memory of people who reduce tear-out by 'wetting' the grain with alcohol before planing it.

In the cases pictured above, I was deliberately not in 'scrub plane' mode.  I was using a fine cut with a blade more flat than radiused, and really pretty happy with the resulting planing finish.

My other personal quirk that leads to across-the-grain finish planing sometimes is:   I resaw my boards too much!  I'm kind of parsimonious when I get a nice-looking board, and where others would resaw to get 2 planks, I like to get 4.   Being not a perfect resaw-er, I sometimes have a bit of lengthwise bowing in my board, which I may choose not to fully flatten.*

*My infamous not-very-flattened resawn project from the beginning of quarantine was this set of shelves.  The vertical resawn boards were so bowed that I 'strapped them' with boards and rods and nuts.

   

[adamcherubini]

When you guys talk about cross grain planing, what do you mean? What is the direction of the motion and what is the direction of the plane? Is it the same? Pure cross grain? And what's the shape of the blade? I may be missing something.

[C. in Indy]

OK,  here is my quick take:

Here is the Christopher Schwarz blog I mentioned:
https://blog.lostartpress.com/2008/02/03...addendums/


Now, here is an illustration, with the following conditions:

  - Rift-sawn & bookmatched red oak cutoff pieces with some tricky rising and falling grains.
  - Using a simple standard-angle block-plane:  I know it's not the best for managing tear-out in general.  But at the same time, it is quite effective when the geometry of work is changed to be perpendicular to the grain.
  - Block plane has a normal bevel grind, and there is very close to zero camber as far as radius is concerned.  Depth of cut set shallow, mouth set tight.


The first two pictures show planing generally across the grain and with the grain.  Again, I know the block plane isn't the finest tool for planing into rising/falling grain.  Where it works well, it makes it shiny.    As far as working across the grain, there is less lustre, but less tearout:

   

   


The next two pictures show the pieces with a very simple finish:  Each was equally dusted with 320-grit sandpaper, and given a quick thinned shellac coat:

   

   


So, again, this is not the trick for every project, but a nice technique to simplify this particular project.

- Chris

[rwe2156]

Problem with figured wood is matching chatoyance you can't always book match. 

All I know is planing panels by hand can lead to a disaster in oak, and I barely scrape by at scraping......

That's why I wouldn't touch it with a plane other than cross grain to flatten then it off to the drum sander.

Many talented people that I admire greatly set the bar high and make me feel so inadequate LOL but NOT seeing any tear out - I'll do whatever it takes!!

[Philip1231]

So there are many ways you can put a bevel on the underside of a table/cabinet top edge, and I have used the table saw and router most often for this. In my most recent build, it was readily apparent, due to the steep angle and size of the top that neither of those options were workable. What to do? Low angle jack to the rescue. It made quick work of this bevel on the ends of the Huntboard top with zero  tear-out and left a very nice surface that could have been finish planed with the grain, but I chose to use the ROS (forgive me handtool purists!).  I prep my stock using machines so I don't get the opportunity to plane across the grain very much, but this experience was a revelation (thanks to Hank Knight for the guidance).  

(Apologies for the crappy pic.)

   

[AHill]

So Schwarz says no tearout planing across the grain, but then admits you "splinter" the far edge of the board. I would call that tearout. His teaser pic is of a high angle smoother, and he ends his blog entry by touting a high angle plane as an alternate approach. Which to me implies planing across the grain doesn't always work to avoid tearout. In my experience flattening a board using a jointer or jack with a highly cambered blade to take down the high spots, I get tearout - which is fine until I'm ready to get to the final smoothing.

Sellers has a good video on why cross-planing might work better for flattening a board. It has a lot to do with the grain and not the fact that you've simply decided to plane cross grain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m231_HKCOWs