Planing teak

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Gerry

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www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
We are about to start replacing some parts of our teak deck. We have bought the timber, a whole plank, had it machined into strips with suitable edging, had to mind the bullets embedded in the wood!(Bought in Guatemala)

It seems sensible to invest in a quality plane before we start, I imagine this project is going to be a bit like painting the Forth Bridge...

I've done a bit of reading and understand that 'cos teak is so hard we need to use special blades on the planer(?).

Anyone have any experience/advice??

Many thanks.

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
 
Hand plane or planing machine.

By hand you may well find that the grain changes direction .. that's a pain .. that teak tends to blunt tools quickly ,,, but a sharp plane iron is essential.
Set a hand plane for hard wood and to a very fine cut.

By hand you'll need a jack plane and a smoothing plane
 
I have hand planed a lot of teak. It is not particularly hard to do as the grain is regular, unlike other hardwoods that have patches you end up planing in the wrong direction. You do need to sharpen the blade at regular intervals. And I do not mean once per week! The plane is nothing special, just a Stanley No 4. I have also used a Black & Decker hand-held machine plane with good results. I tried tungsten carbide tipped blades and ordinary blades and preferred the TCT blades.

With both hand and machine planes it is important to set the cut finer than you would set it for other woods. Me machine plane can cut 1.5 millimetres per cut in softwood but I never go above 1 mm for teak and for final cuts reduce to 0.5 mm. In fact I have usually finished off hand planing with a fine cut.

PS I see Vic has mentioned cross grain. Maybe I was lucky but mine was not afflicted with this as much as the "mahogany" I was using at the time. The teak was deck planks from "The Queen of Bermuda" and a lab bench from a college I worked in. We were taking it out of the staff work room to make room for a table-tennis table. Happy days!
 
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So a Stanley No 4 and Tungsten Carbide Tipped blades?

Yes it will all be hand done, replacing the damaged strips as and when necessary...

Anything else we should be aware of before we begin?

Many Thanks.

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com

NB just looked up stanley no 4 and am somewhat confused as there seems to be a number of different kins, what should I be going for?
 
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you can buy a block plane,
an electric planer & router
& a rabbet & fillester plane
or just a rabbet plane for the seams, if your going to do it by hand its a lot of work
 
Gerry said:
We are about to start replacing some parts of our teak deck. We have bought the timber, a whole plank, had it machined into strips with suitable edging, had to mind the bullets embedded in the wood!(Bought in Guatemala)

It seems sensible to invest in a quality plane before we start, I imagine this project is going to be a bit like painting the Forth Bridge...

I've done a bit of reading and understand that 'cos teak is so hard we need to use special blades on the planer(?).

Anyone have any experience/advice??

Many thanks.

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
Click to expand...

Have you considered a belt sander?
 
Gerry said:
So a Stanley No 4 and Tungsten Carbide Tipped blades?

Yes it will all be hand done, replacing the damaged strips as and when necessary...

Anything else we should be aware of before we begin?

Many Thanks.

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com

NB just looked up stanley no 4 and am somewhat confused as there seems to be a number of different kins, what should I be going for?
Click to expand...

Buy a Stanley or Record 10 inches long, better to buy secondhand as they are expensive new and there are a lot of dodgy cheap imports around. Anyway there is a strange satisfaction in buying a good secondhand tool.
You can buy diamond stones fairly cheaply now and they have a lot of advantages, a honing guide will also be very useful if you are new to the business - about £6- £10, well worth the money.

PS. As before: a Smoothing Plane is what you are after.
 
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"So a Stanley No 4 and Tungsten Carbide Tipped blades"

The TCT tipped blades are for a machine planer. I do not know if you can get TCT tipped blades for a hand plane. My 45 year old Stanley No 4 is still on its original blade.

The diamond stones may be a good idea. I have a set of three (bought cheaply in Lidl) but have never got round to using them as I have always used my two-sided combination stone and am used to it. I must try out the diamonds sometime if I can find them. I have a weakness in buying tools, putting them away and forgetting that I have them.
 
Gerry said:
We are about to start replacing some parts of our teak deck. We have bought the timber, a whole plank, had it machined into strips with suitable edging, had to mind the bullets embedded in the wood!(Bought in Guatemala)

It seems sensible to invest in a quality plane before we start, I imagine this project is going to be a bit like painting the Forth Bridge...

I've done a bit of reading and understand that 'cos teak is so hard we need to use special blades on the planer(?).

Anyone have any experience/advice??

Many thanks.

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
Click to expand...

If you have lot to do and have £ 200 get one of these will save a lot of time and effort spare blades not too expensive but you will do several miles b4 you need to sharpen or change blades.

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.j...ndid=9806509&ecamp=trf-005&CAWELAID=266909968
 
Thanks for all the replies.

Has to be done by hand as most of the time we are at anchor and just don't have the power to run machines.

Does anyone know if you can get TCT blades for a hand planer?

Also any suggestions of a good place to buy, I am trawling ebay for a secondhand one but where would I get a new one, plus blades from?

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
 
beer lubrication

Gerry said:
Thanks for all the replies.

Has to be done by hand as most of the time we are at anchor and just don't have the power to run machines.

Does anyone know if you can get TCT blades for a hand planer?

Also any suggestions of a good place to buy, I am trawling ebay for a secondhand one but where would I get a new one, plus blades from?

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
Click to expand...
there are or used to be a few planes you could get tct edges for stanley did one you bought the whole blade but it had a little add on bit but unlikely you wiill get one now, but I can tell you tct is rubbish on a hand plane the original edge is not as sharp as hss and requires too much force to push the plane.

The best way is buy 4/5 blades and sharpen them all, useall 5(1 at a time :)) then swap them as necessary(get on a roll) then stop, beer:), sharpen all. do again repeat ad nauseum. when drunk have a snooze !

Make sure you have proper back clearance (angle of sharpening ) on blades , if not enough you will struggle . a bit of practice... you will get a lot, It will become easy very easy.
 
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A pal of mine, sculptor by trade and a superb carpenter, sharpens his blades (and mine when I can get him to do it) on a whet stone with WATER, not oil.

He has several stones from rough to fine and sharpens and sharpens and sharpens until they are mega sharp, then finally strops/rubs them on an old shaving leather.

The results he gets with wood, with this technique is supreme. The secret seems to be patience and persistence. It pays off handsomely and gives better results than any elctrical planer I have seen.
 
If you can get a couple of Japanese Water Stones like these http://www.axminster.co.uk/category-Japanese-Waterstones-208587.htm and a couple of good 2nd hand planes then you will be onto a winner. With the Water Stones you can get such a sharp edge that it stays usable for longer and gives an almost perfect finish.

I don't know about TCT blades, I tend to stick with older steel. I get my tools from http://www.pennyfarthingtools.co.uk/ but if you are in the Caribbean then you must be able to find something similar there.

If you do sharpen with water stones, be careful, very easy to cut yourself without even knowing it.
 
NPMR said:
A pal of mine, sculptor by trade and a superb carpenter, sharpens his blades (and mine when I can get him to do it) on a whet stone with WATER, not oil.

He has several stones from rough to fine and sharpens and sharpens and sharpens until they are mega sharp, then finally strops/rubs them on an old shaving leather.

The results he gets with wood, with this technique is supreme. The secret seems to be patience and persistence. It pays off handsomely and gives better results than any elctrical planer I have seen.
Click to expand...

Second whetstone and water

For a super sharp edge I finish chisels and plane blades with solvol autosol (or any abrasive paste) on a piece of mirror glass.
 
Gerry said:
Thanks for all the replies.

Has to be done by hand as most of the time we are at anchor and just don't have the power to run machines.

Does anyone know if you can get TCT blades for a hand planer?

Also any suggestions of a good place to buy, I am trawling ebay for a secondhand one but where would I get a new one, plus blades from?

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
Click to expand...

Here is a good used buy (20 quid, half way down):

http://www.oldtools.co.uk/tools/planes_scrapers/metal.planes/smoothing.planes.pg1.php

It has plastic handles, so is of less interest to the tool collector type but grand for your requirements.

Here for new tools of all types:

http://www.axminster.co.uk/category-Planes--Bench-207706.htm

The cheaper planes from these people should be of sound quality as well.

You wont get replacable blades for these planes, one blade lasts a lifetime (much green cred) hence the need for the sharpening kit - stones etc.

Beware,
A hand planer is an electric plane, mains voltage - this does have replacable TCT blades.
A hand plane is what you are after.

God knows what the carrage will be to the Windies - good luck.
 
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doug748 said:
Here is a good used buy (20 quid, half way down):

http://www.oldtools.co.uk/tools/planes_scrapers/metal.planes/smoothing.planes.pg1.php

It has plastic handles, so is of less interest to the tool collector type but grand for your requirements.

Here for new tools of all types:

http://www.axminster.co.uk/category-Planes--Bench-207706.htm

The cheaper planes from these people should be of sound quality as well.

You wont get replacable blades for these planes, one blade lasts a lifetime (much green cred) hence the need for the sharpening kit - stones etc.

Beware,
A hand planer is an electric plane, mains voltage - this does have replacable TCT blades.
A hand plane is what you are after.

God knows what the carrage will be to the Windies - good luck.
Click to expand...



Okay so I'm going for the secondhand one as highlighted and a japanese waterstone sharpener. Maybe bid on a plane that's on ebay too...

Carriage will be by next offspring to visit us!

Thanks so much for all the advice and I'll be sure to call it a plane not a planer!

www.gerryantics.blogspot.com
 
If you are planing hardwoods then you will need to close the gap in the mouth of the plane so help prevent lifting the grain as you plane. This is done by adjusting the frog on the plane as well as setting the blade to the correct depth.

See the wiki link for this to make sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(tool)

Additionally, especially if you buy a new plane or blade (only a smoothing plane), the edge should be sharpenend with a slightly convex curve across the width (camber) so that the edges of the blade do not dig in, literally just 0.5 to 1mm across the width of the blade. (The honing and grinding surfaces should be flat). The picture shows more than I put on my smoothing plane.
http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/camber.html

Also buy a narrow plane, if you have large areas to do; it is easier to drive for long periods over a hardwood. I did have a love 1 3/4" smoothing plane but someone borrowed it. Also had a 2 1/2" smoothing plane and rarely used it so now I have my 2" stanley which was second hand when I was an apprantice and now on the third blade (about 25yrs old).

Also look at the grain (see the wiki link) and if the plane is sharp enjoy.
 
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