Hand planing can leave a superb final surface on wood. However, the beautiful figured woods that are one of the great joys of woodworking often cause tearout and play havoc with our efforts. This is the first in a series of posts that will explore a compendium of options for achieving an excellent finished surface on difficult woods.

When planning a project, I consider early on how to put the final surface on the wood, along with which finish to apply. Understanding an arsenal of options, and testing the tools and methods beforehand, gives me the wherewithal to use the woods I love.

There are several prefatory issues:

1. The topic of these posts is finish planing or “smoothing,” not planing for stock preparation. For the latter, even highly figured woods such as tight curly maple, can be successfully worked with a conventionally configured jack plane: bevel-down on a 45° frog with a 30-35° honing angle, or bevel-up on a 12° frog with a 38° honing angle. The key is to plane at about 60-90° to the grain, which means across the curls. (This is not skewing the plane; it is pushing the plane diagonally across the grain.) This leaves a somewhat rough surface but one that is adequate for dimensioning, and there is little or no tearout to clean up with the smoother.

This method may not work for swirly figure, such as waterfall bubinga. For that, a toothed blade in a bevel-up jack plane, planing with progressively shallower blade projections, works wonders. Clean up the surface with a conventional blade.

My preference for dimensioning figured stock is the DW735 with the Byrd Shelix carbide spiral cutterhead. Then comes smoothing with a hand plane.

2. Why use a plane at all for smoothing? Why not just sand? Well, for some woods and in some circumstances, I think sanding is the better option. However, I prefer to smooth plane when I can because, compared to sanding, it is faster, more pleasant, and better retains the trueness of the surface. Furthermore, for some woods (walnut comes to mind), the final surface is distinctly superior when hand planed. I also recognize that for some woods (bubinga comes to mind), depending on the type of finish to be applied, sanding is just as good as planing.

3. Sharpness is king. Using a very sharp blade, properly cambered, solves so many planing problems. Conversely, using a dull or poorly shaped blade edge for smoothing will create problems regardless of the type of plane, the angles used, and so forth.

4. Skewing the plane helps with almost all of the plane and blade configurations that will be discussed for smoothing. The physics of why it works is an interesting topic for another time, but beyond the scope of these posts.

5. For some woods and some circumstances, light sanding with fine grit such as 320 or 400 is appropriate after smooth planing. The main thing is to be sensitive to what you are trying to achieve with the wood, and not be governed by purist dogma.

So, in this series we’ll look at different tools and setups, their advantages and disadvantages, but with the theme that there are multiple good ways to get excellent results. The key is to know your options.

If you are looking to acquire hand tool skills and can get to, or live in, the north-central Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire areas, consider contacting Steve Branam, author of the Close Grain blog. Earlier this year, Steve started his Close Grain School of Woodworking in Pepperell, MA.

Learning hand tool skills can be confusing and take longer than necessary if you go it alone. In Steve’s words, “Part of what I want to convey is that this is well within the scope of most people’s ability.” As you can see from the outline of the skills he teaches, his approach is systematic and thoughtful. It is skills-based learning, rather than project-based, which makes a lot of sense to me. I also like his down-to-earth approach, devoid of hyperbolic claims of quick and easy perfection.

The best part is that Steve offers you three ways to learn. At his Pepperell location, you can attend group classes. There you can also get private instruction from him in which you have the option of choosing the skill areas you want to work on. Thirdly, Steve will actually travel to your shop/home (within a 60-mile radius of Ayer, MA) for private instruction. In all cases, he even provides tools and materials, or you can use your own tools. There is no excuse left for sitting on the hand tool sidelines or floundering with trial and error.

By my calculation, Steve has somehow managed to circumvent the normal human requirement for sleep. Actually, this is my way of expressing admiration for his entrepreneurship as well as his dedication to sharing woodworking skills.

My recent hike in New Hampshire’s White Mountains prompted this thought.

As we attempt in our woodworking shops to make objects of some small beauty, I believe we are merely borrowing from the ultimate source of beauty, the Creator, to bring joy to us and to those who appreciate our work. That is truly happy woodworking, for which I am grateful.

Happy woodworking to you, dear readers.

Fresh designs are exciting to conceive and build. The effort and risk involved in developing a new design concept lead to a feeling of accomplishment when the work is done. By virtue of their novelty alone, such pieces draw attention, and tend to be called creative, imaginative, clever, or even brilliant. New interest is created, boredom is avoided, and challenges are met. Creativity expands.

Yet, if every project is fresh and different, when will you have a chance to refine your work? Most truly excellent work is a result of refinements of previous attempts at the same or similar idea. Such work builds upon a previous design concept by refining elements such as proportions, materials, textures, workmanship, and meaningful embellishments. The integration of the elements is also refined.

That’s how the best work comes about. It’s true of furniture, jokes, recipes, tools, music, and on and on. You have to work on something to make it better! Your work does not always have to be new and different. And as for “original,” I’m not sure there truly is such a thing. On the other hand, appreciating the value of refinement does not excuse working an idea to death, getting stale and unimaginative, complacency, or creative laziness.

As an example, look at the work of the late Sam Maloof. His iconic rocking chairs are the products of years of refinement of a core style concept, but his work is never boring. Still, early Maloof is not as good as later Maloof.

Another good study in refinement is Albert Sack’s Fine Points of Furniture books in which his keen eye identified the “good, better, best” of early American furniture and its features.

Now, here are some related bite-sized opinions for thought. The “arteests” and the arbiters of cool in some parts of the high-end craft world seem to reflexively give extra credit to work which is new and different, but often lack the attention span to extol work which is less flashy but has undergone sustained refinement. New is not automatically better. On the other hand, the approach from some corners (Architectural Digest?) seems to take it as axiomatic that the refined work of modern masters such as Maloof, Jere Osgood, and Silas Kopf cannot be as good as that of the 18th century masters. Oh, how I disagree with that!

In summary, while there is much value to fresh ideas, we should not forget the role of refinement in producing the best work.

It is usually difficult to accurately concentrically enlarge a hole, especially when working with unpowered or electric hand-held drills instead of a drill press. Furthermore, the sides of the previously drilled hole tend to grab the larger bit and pull it in faster and deeper than desired, sometimes creating a ragged rim at the top of the enlarged hole. A simple tool that has saved the day for me a number of times over the years is the step drill bit.

The one I use, pictured above, has 13 steps, each 1/32″, from 1/8″ to 1/2″. Simply seat the appropriate diameter step in the original hole and drill down to the step of the desired size. It may be helpful to mark the desired step. The resulting shallow hole at the top can now concentrically register a regular bit for the new hole size. Of course, this won’t manage every situation, but it is a helpful option to have in the shop. I have never found a bit with 1/64″ steps.

These bits, sometimes called “drill tree” bits, are designed for drilling in thin metal and plastic, and for that I have found nothing better. They advance smoothly and produce a very clean hole with none of the grabbing or tearing common with regular twist bits.

They are available at home centers and hardware stores. It pays to keep an eye out for tools that are not intended for woodworking but which can nonetheless be useful in the wood shop. “Step drill” can also refer to concentrically ground twist bits, similar to those used for drilling pocket holes. W.L. Fuller in Rhode Island makes an incredible selection of step twist bits, including custom tooling.

Correcting one’s mistakes and finding a way out of jams are like every other skill: with enough practice, you get good at it. I’ve given myself plenty of practice, so I hope passing on these little tips will be helpful to you.

Finally, let’s look at the most doubtful part of the joint which is the adherence of the round dowel surface to the end grain portion of the hole.

This time, 5/16″ diameter Laurier dowels were inserted 3/4″ into holes drilled with a brad point bit in mahogany to again mimic the face grain side of the dowel joint. After drying, some of the samples were cut with an orientation to to primarily examine adhesion to the end grain portion of the hole – see the three pieces on the left in the photo below. The two pieces on the right are oriented to primarily examine adhesion to the side grain portion of the hole.

The dowels were smacked as described in the first post. The results shown are typical of several trials and they look good – the dowels adhere well to the end grain part of the hole, as seen in the first two photos below. For comparison, the next two photos show side grain and, from a separate trial, long grain adhesion.

This methodology is far from perfect. What is really demonstrated in many of the samples, essentially, is that the half joints are stronger than the half dowels. It does, nonetheless, give some sense of what is going on inside those holes with dowels glued into them. While not a joint strength test and certainly not scientific, this gives some insight into the behavior of the components of dowel joinery.

All in all, I am not surprised that in the test of the real world, the dowel joinery in my cabinets has held up well. Furthermore, these little experiments will help me proceed more knowledgeably building future projects, and I hope they will help you with your work.

Now let’s turn our attention to the face grain side of the joint where the grain of the dowels is perpendicular to that of the board. This is similar to a multiple mortise and tenon joint but among the important differences is that, because the dowel is round, there is limited side-grain-to-side-grain glue surface. So, it is reasonable to question the glue adherence of the dowel in its hole.

To mimic and investigate this part of the joint, 3/8″ diameter Laurier and Made-in-China dowels were glued 3/4″ deep into holes drilled with a brad point bit. The next day, the wood was resawn through the middle of the dowels. The dowels were then smacked to failure as described in the previous post. The orientation of this procedure primarily examines the adhesion of the dowel to the side grain portion of the hole.

As seen in the photos above, both the Laurier and the made-in-China (MiC) dowels performed well with both Titebond III and 202GF glues. The Laurier dowels were preferable in the long grain side of the joint, so they are my choice for dowel joinery, along with TB3 or 202GF glue.

Titebond No Run No Drip (TBNRND) glue did not create good adherence, and a heavy spread of it in one of the holes caused enough resistance to inserting the dowel that the wood split. It is an excellent glue for some jobs but I don’t think the best choice for this one.

Dowel joints have the same sort of cross grain dimensional change conflict as, for example, a multiple mortise and tenon. Nonetheless, I find these tests reassuring regarding the quality of the glue line in dowel joints.

Here is another reason I prefer Laurier dowels. Their spiral grooves are shallower than the straight grooves of the made-in-China (and similar) dowels, as seen in the photo below. After a 15 minute soak in water (the second photo below), which mimics the response to water based glues, the Laurier grooves expand more to take up the space in the joint. The Laurier grooves are formed by compression, and therefore will retain their expanded profile.

But wait, there’s more! The most suspect issue with a dowel is how it adheres to the end grain glue surface in its hole. That will be addressed in the next post.

In casework, doweling can be a good choice to join the end grain of one board to the face grain of another across their widths. This method for making cabinets was described and popularized by the late James Krenov in The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking. While noting that dowel joinery opens up many design options where the sides meet the top and bottom of a cabinet, Krenov warns us to use good judgement in selecting it for a piece; though durable, it is not for heavy-duty work.

The joinery in the pieces I have made with this method has remained tight for many years without a hint of problem. Nevertheless, some doubts have lingered in my mind about a joint that involves relatively little side grain gluing surface compared to the gold standards of mortise-and-tenon and dovetail joints. I wanted to see what was really going on inside dowel joints.

To do that, I had to make ’em and break ’em. My qualitative observations, combined with some intuition and educated guessing, are informative enough for my purposes. This is not a joint strength test, nor is it scientific. The photos show typical results.

First, let’s look at the “end-grain side” of the joint where the long grain of the dowel is parallel to the long grain of the board.

Using a DeWalt Pilot Point bit and a Krenov-style jig, 3/8″ holes were bored in poplar in the long-grain direction, deep enough to allow 3/4 inch of dowel insertion plus room for excess glue. Glue was spread only in the holes. After 24 hours, the wood was sawn through the middle of its thickness. Each half was secured in a vise, and each dowel was then hit with a hammer toward the open face to make the connection fail. The photos show the dowels snapped backwards, exposing the half hole.

From left to right,above:

1. A made-in-China (MiC) dowel glued with Titebond III. Fair adhesion – some wood is torn away.

2. A MiC dowel glued with Titebond No-Run No-Drip glue. The bond largely failed as evidenced by the relatively clean surfaces.

3. A Laurier brand dowel, made in Canada, glued with Titebond III. Plenty of wood failure, indicating a good joint. That’s what I’m looking for.

Update Aug 29, 2017: A reader has informed me, based on information directly from Laurier, that Laurier dowels are no longer being manufactured. The owner has retired, and the machinery that makes the dowels is for sale.  A few sizes remain available at justjoinery.ca

The TB No-Run No-Drip glue is very viscous, and handy in that it doesn’t run down and collect at the bottom of the hole. However, in other tests I found it did not spread well over the Laurier dowels which have less space for the glue in their spiral flutes. There was too much resistance to inserting the dowels, the glue got pushed down, and too much pressure was created. I thought it might work well with the more deeply fluted Chinese-made dowels, and they did go in easier, but TB III still made a better joint with them.

So, for long grain dowel insertion, I’ll go with Laurier dowels and Titebond III. (In other trials, Lee Valley’s 202GF performed similarly to TB III.)

Lee Valley sells the Laurier dowels. Grizzly sells the Chinese-made dowels. To keep myself out of trouble, I emphasize that these are not scientific tests, and my conclusions that I am sharing with you are for my purposes in my shop. These should be regarded as anecdotal findings. Please refer to the manufacturers’ and vendors’ literature and make your own choices.

Of course, there is the other half of the joint to consider – the face grain board. Obviously, the same dowel must be used but it does not have to be the same glue in each half. So, in the next post, we’ll look at side grain insertion of the dowels with various options. This is the part of the joint that creates more doubt for me since much of the dowel surface is bonded to end grain surfaces inside the hole. The results of my tests surprised me.