From rec.woodworking
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"About 10 years ago I discovered the difference between cutting something versus beating the holy crap out of something...if you want people to be in awe of your work and get dizzy from the depth and beauty of the wood, start planing."
?Comment from respondent on rec.woodworking about the value of planing versus sanding |
It doesn't take much to get the die-hard hand planers fired up about the utility of this ancient tool, so when a woodworker started a discussion called "what is the deal with hand planes?", we guessed it would get a lot of responses. We got 45 messages into the discussion before we had to drop out and write up all the advice and useful information.
The original question came from someone who was admittedly unfamiliar with hand planes and honestly curious about how to use them. He saw a reference in "Fine Woodworking" about using a plane instead of sanding and wondered how that worked. He wrote, "how in the world is planing a substitute for sanding?"
The first response put it plainly and simply: "Proper planing produces better results. Sanding abrades away the wood. Planing shears it off." This responder also suggested the advantages of using a cabinet scraper for the final surface preparation, thus leading to a side discussion about what a scraper was, how to find one, and how to find tutorials on the Web to learn how to use it.
But getting back to the planes, one person wrote that "planed surfaces give a more burnished surface that reflects the light better. Sanding leaves torn fibers which disperse the light; planed surfaces leave a cut edge which reflects the light. No matter how finely you sand, you are still leaving torn rather than cut fibers."
The original woodworker who posted this thread got back on and thanked everyone for the advice. He further posed a question about the different numbered planes and about the cost and quality of planes. More than one person referred him to Patrick Leach's guide to planes, under the section "Blood and Gore", at http://ww
w.supertool.com/
Finally, someone suggested that planing a surface requires a lot of skill, a finely tuned tool and alignment with the grain of the wood. He said, for beginning woodworkers, "sanding is a perfectly good option." Others argued that it didn't take an inordinate amount of skill, and one person referred to R. Bruce Hoadley's "Understanding Wood" wherein there is a series of microscopic photographs of a planed (cut) surface versus a sanded (abraded) surface.