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Post by admin on Nov 1, 2009 21:43:56 GMT -6
Instead of hijacking Leo's great thread on smoothing wood, I figure I'd hijack my own, er, start my own...
A while back, I had some time to kill, and I started tuning my plane a bit (I'd just acquired a better way of sharpening plane irons if ya must know, and one o' the guys here is much to thank for it!), and, well, I got sorta carried away and planed about 20bf of poplar lumber four sides. Had fun, got sweaty, and got plane shavings on me. Good day.
Well I went back to the stash today to get a couple pieces, and they'd... Changed.
When I stored them on the floor beneath my bench each board was dang near glossy. I took one of the pieces, and hit it with 320 grit and it dulled the finish. That was how well I had my plane working.
So I went back to the stash, I noticed that the texture of the boards had changed. They are now more coarse to the touch, and the boards have taken on a slightly stubbly texture. Still to short to see, but long enough to feel.
Has the fibers stood up after being bowled over by my planing? Or is it just something poplar does?
The texture now feels like it's been gone over with 220-320 grit paper.
Any ideas, and what could I do, if anything, to prevent this in the future.
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Post by TDHofstetter on Nov 1, 2009 22:15:25 GMT -6
What happened was... the freshly-planed surface was very dry - the planing took off the outer layer, which had more moisture in it than the core. Under the bench, the newly-planed wood took on more moisture again from the air & raised the grain. Some part of the culprit may have even been dew.
Poplar is kinda' famous for that, more so than any other wood I know.
One thing that helps is to plane poplar very shortly before applying some finish or other to help seal the wood. Oil helps, shellac stops it nearly dead, most common finishes will help a lot.
Another thing that'll probably help more is holding the humidity in the shop quite a lot lower... ideally approaching the humidity in a heated house. When you've got a project hot on the fire & it includes poplar (other hardwoods to a lesser degree), you may need to heat the shop continuously from planing time to finishing time; the heat helps because warm air can contain more water vapor than cold air.
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