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I have not yet purchased a drum sander because I'm quite competent with a hand plane, and have never found a piece of wood that I could not size and surface properly. Until tonight.

I purchased a 3x3 turning square marked "Palo Santos" from a local lumber yard. The length is adequate to get a fingerboard and a classical bridge out of each sawn plank so it would be good for about 4-5 guitars until I hit a split along the bottom.

The Allied Lutherie webpage states is the same as Pao Ferro: "Pau ferro (Machaerium scleroxylon), one more among many names for this attractive wood (Morado, Palo Santos, Caviuna, Bolivian rosewood, Brazilian ironwood, etc.) " Please note that just this description is from Allied, as the wood was purchased elsewhere.

I have sharpened up my bevel-up smoothing plane to a higher than usual bevel angle, gave it a fresh honing, and closed the mouth of the plane as small as I could make it. The wood is almost perfectly quartersawn on the face I was planing as you can see in the endgrain in the picture below. But no matter how I approached this from either end of the board there were huge amounts of tearout.

Is this typical of this wood, or did I get a bad (punky) chunk of this stuff? Here's a picture and you can see the carnage on the top surface.



I'll put this aside and try it again once I get that drum sander I've been thinking about. But I'm not sure I want to use this at all if this is a punky piece. It has a nice clear ringing taptone, which I wouldn't expect if it was filled with rot. It sands well and scrapes well with a card scraper, but it really hates edge tools.

Would you still use this for fingerboards and bridges?

Looks like interlocked grain. I haven't worked this wood enough to know how typical that is. If you can get a good shaving with a scraper, punkiness would not seem to be the problem.

There is a difference between using a bench plane and a block (bevel up) plane that are presenting the same cutting angle to the wood. I'm not sure just how it works--maybe it's about how much metal is behind the cutting edge--but they don't do the same job. I would think a high pitch bench plane is the tool for this. . . . Or not.

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Howard,

Terry Gordon explains plane blade angle well and also makes simply the best hand planes you will find anywhere.

Read the article and then have a brows around his website and check out the planes. These are beautiful tools to look at but more importantly they are a true joy to work with being just perfect for 'true' hardwoods, cranky grain and end-grain work.

http://www.hntgordon.com.au/newsletterbladeangles.htm

Cheers

Kim

Yes interlocked grain (common in mahoganies and rosewoods too), you need an even higher angle blade (York pitch), and finish with the scraper, as you will still get a bit of tearout.

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Build log

You may have to go for a cutting angle of 60 degrees or higher. For a bevel up plane a Stanley Block 9.5 is already pitched at 21 degrees, grind at around 36 degrees and put on a further micro bevel. I have a spare blade specifically for tasks such as this. There is also the option of the cheap wooden Taiwan/Chinese wooden smoothing planes that are pitched at 60 degrees. According to all the reports that I have read they work very well.
If the Block plane fails me I switch to a toothed iron (bevel down in a 4.5) and cabinet scraper.

Thanks guys for all the help! There were three main responses:

1) It's the plane.

The planes I used were a Lee Valley bevel-up smoother, which is much beefier than a block plane. The blade was honed to 30 degrees + 12 degree bed angle to have 42 degree attack angle. This is way too low and had lots of tear-out. Then I moved to my 55 degree Knight smoother with an extremely tight mouth. The tearout was much less deep when using this plane, but still existent.

2) It's the sharpening.

I've participated in a Kezuro-Kai (shaving contest) in Japan a few years back. I can get fine and even shavings that are transparent on well behaved wood. I've used several different sharpening methods over the years and have found a regimen that works for me. It's not a religion (like the crazy guys who actually win the Kezuro-Kai), but it works for me.

3) It's the wood.

This is my concern. If the wood is this prone to shedding parts of itself, then is it worth smoothing down with a scraper and sanpaper into a fingerboard? I'm concerned that the strings and fingernails of the player could turn this into a rutted mess over time.

I would love to hear from someone who has worked this wood with a plane without these issues. I'm still wondering if this is species based, or if this is just bad luck of the draw. I like the wood, but don't want to buy more if this is a standard behavior of this species.

Paul:

I got what kind of plane you were using. I subscribe to the terminology Patrick Leach uses, in which any bevel up plane is a block plane, any bevel down plane is a bench plane. Doesn't matter to your problem.

Knight makes a nice plane, with a heavy iron, but you still might fare better with a plane that has a cap iron, and also a higher bed pitch. Higher than York (55º) is hard to find, though.

Bench and block (OK, bevel down and bevel up) planes presenting the same cutting angle to the wood don't perform the same. That Gordon article addresses edge retention, but that's not all of it. Bevel down puts metal lower down behind the edge. My conjecture is that this, along with a well-fitted cap iron, reduces chatter and makes the cut go better.

Interlocked grain. You can't help cutting uphill on the fibers. Maybe reaction wood. Did someone say that every piece of wood has to cut well with a plane?

You may note I never questioned whether you can sharpen. I took that as a given.

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

The LV bevel up smoother should be your weapon of choice. You need to give it a secondary bevel so that it is effectively cutting at 60 degrees. In fact many people who have the plane purchase a second blade and grind it at a much steeper angle, that enables them to tackle difficult wood.
If you still experience tearout it's over to the scraper and/or sandpaper. Once smooth it will be fine for a fretboard, strings/players nails will not shred it.
Here's a review of the LV Bevel up Jack - pitched the same as your smoother. Note how she swaps the blade for a higher angle to tame the 'board from hell'.

http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/view ... hp?p=23326

One thing that makes bench planes different from block planes is the cap iron, AKA 'chip breaker'. Getting that as close as possible to the edge without choking the plane is usually a big help on figured wood. A real bullnose secondary bevel on your block plane can work nearly as well. You ought to see the planes violin bow makers use: more like scrapers reallym, but they need that to avoid tearout on the pernambuco.

That said: yes Pao Ferro/Morado/Whatever is like that sometimes. About all you can do is use the highest angle you can, keep the chip breaker up tight, use a small throat, take light cuts, and plan on some quality scraper time. Fortunately, the memory of such pain tends to fade fast...

Thanks Michael N for the link. It's been a while since I've read anything from Alf. She used to post regularly on the hand tool section of woodcentral, but it's been a while since she visited.

Thanks also for the confirmation, as this is exactly what I was looking for:
"Once smooth it will be fine for a fretboard, strings/players nails will not shred it."

Since the fretboard is unfinished I wasn't sure whether tearout during planing implies likelyhood of tearout during playing. I was wondering if I should rip this block for fingerboard/bridge blanks, or rip this to a different width for binding material as that will be protected by finish on the end product. It's good to know it can still be used for fingerboards.

Thanks everyone for your responses!

Paul

Another thing to know about this wood, is that it causes allergic reactions in a large portion of the people who handle it. Fortunately for me it doesn't, as it is one of my favorites.

Bob

Paul, you could always go this route. http://www.specialtytuners.com/sanding_disk.html

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Aoibeann

Can you and would you use the Safe-t-plane on the Bolivian ? I have a pretty big board that I can make into a nice guitar set and was planning to use the Wagner -

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

That's good to know! I had no adverse reactions from my planing session with it the other night. I have had contact reactions to cocobolo when I was leveling the binding on my first guitar so I know that I do have contact allergies to that wood. Luckily binding is finished so there is no wood contact during playing.

In a fingerboard application (where there is no finish), is a contact allergy something to consider for a player? I think a seasoned (i.e. not been sanded for a month or two) fingerboard would not bother a player. But that's just my thinking and not based upon anything resembling a fact. Does anybody know if a player can develop a contact allergy reaction from playing a guitar with a Cocobolo or Pau Ferro fingerboard?

I've read reports of wind players having reactions to cocobolo (recorders, flutes), but lips are a lot less tough than fingers. It's also not clear how common these reactions are.
I've read of builders treating fingerboards with CA to improve smoothness/'feel' so that might be one route to try if allergies were a concern.
As the 'peanut issue' has shown us all, allergies are funny things- once a person is sensitized, it can take very little exposure to trigger an attack, so it is hard to plan for all the possible future exposures.

Cheers
John