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Yesterday was the first time in 20 years I wished for an electric sander.
I’m finishing up a new table design and am just about to finish all the surfaces before assembly. The only problem is that this maple trashes every plane iron after about two strokes.
I’ve seen this happen with exotics such as purpleheart that naturally have a lot of silica. And with a stick of Douglas fir wood that John Economaki of Bridge City Tools gave me as a joke. He called it unplanable, and he’s right. The reason is that it was a tree that had been blown down by the eruption of Mount St. Helens and became impregnated with silica by the explosion.
So who knows what the heck is going on with this maple. I can’t find any metal embedded in the wood.
What to do? Lots of sharpening. I’m going to get the surface as good as possible with planes and finish off with some hand sanding. So it’s going to be a long day.
— Christopher Schwarz
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