Watch This: How to Stop Tearout
Gary Rogowski helps you understand every woodworker's enemy, tearout.
Mar 26, 2020
It feels like the universe is punishing me when a board tears out while I’m hand planing, like something I did as a kid is coming back to haunt me. After all, I choose my boards in part for their looks and grain, so when they work against me, it seems like a form of penance to have to fix tearout. Sometimes the fix is easy: choose well-behaved boards.
Planing with rising grain leaves a smooth surface
But I don’t want to build everything out of mild, well-behaved wood. Sometimes I want the drama of figure. This can lead to problems.
Changes in the grain can lead to tearout
Trouble spot. This tight area of dipping grain in a figured cherry board is hard to work around, and may be too much for a standard bench plane to handle cleanly.
Luckily, I’ve come up with some answers. Some years ago I learned of two wood technologists, Yasunori Kawai and Chutaro Kato, who studied plane irons and how they cut wood. The two looked into three variables: grain direction, depth of cut, and how far back to set a chipbreaker. Their experiments kept the blade’s bevel angle and cutting angle the same. Inspired by their efforts and results, I decided I had to run my own experiments. What I learned transformed my No. 4. Watch the video, run your own experiments, and see for yourself.
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Comments
I hate subtitles. I'm sure I've missed a lot of good foreign films over the years and I'm not alone, there are lots of us that can't stand the distraction of subtitles. To all those like myself this video is worth it. Let the stop button be your friend and watch it twice.
That film was fascinating and, as usual, Gary Rogowski rides to the rescue by finding scientific proof on what matters in battling tearout. True, that not all woods will react the same, but this helps zero in on those adjustments that offer the best chance of a smooth cut. Thanks, Gary.
I have found putting the chip breaker as close as humanly possible to the cutting edge makes a huge difference in tear out in figured wood.
I found the video fascinating. Viewing this video should be required of any one learning how to plane. It's the clearest illustration of how a plane works!
Thanks for this fascinating video, Gary.
It made things much clearer and easier
Best regards from Brazil
Fernando
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