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20th January 2024, 01:37 AM #46GOLD MEMBER
- Join Date
- Mar 2010
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sounds like they might be a good candidate for a drum sander! hard and soft is OK if the wood is quartered and everything runs that way. When there's crosslinking and varying density running transverse to the ring, it's hard to figure it out!
Buffing can defeat the silica, but if it takes more force to cut the hard bits than the soft bits will support, I've got nothin other than wood filler or french polish! (i don't have wood filler, so if french polish doesn't fix it...)
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20th January 2024, 11:03 AM #47
Actually, I find (most) casuarinas plane better on the tangential surface than the radial. The walls of those huge rays tend to be very brittle & will shatter a bit under the sharpest of blades leaving a fine stipple effect - it's too small to feel, but it's clearly visible. For some reason, be it that you're cutting just small areas of each cell or they're better held by the surrounding parencymal tissue, the rays cut much cleaner on the tangential surface.
I think there are many roads to Rome when it comes to finishing the more 'difficult' woods we have down here. I do like to finish off-plane whenever I can, it's simply quicker & easier than having to switch to an alternative. But if trying to smooth a piece of quartered she-oak, for e.g., I usually finish with a finely burnished card scraper, to get rid of the last shreds of fine tear-out in the ray cell walls. Occasionally (shudder) I've even been known to break out a sheet of sandpaper.....
Cheers,IW