15" blades to minimise tearout?

[Waldo]

G'day,

I was just thinking as I waited for the water to boil for my coffee, given that and for example, the Veritas Bevel up smoother with a total bed and blade angle of 60% is great for Aussie hardwoods with cranky grain and thus minimising tearout - would the blades in my CTJ-381, be it HSS or 18% tungsten, be better ground at a 60º angle with the sole purpose for use in hardwoods.

At Dj's plane making day last Saturday, Helmut gave a very good explanation of why a combined blade angle on planes of 60º or greater gives less opportunity for shavings to curl over a greater distance and thus tearout is minimised.

What do you think, am I onto something or not?

[chrisp]

Waldo,

I think you are on to something, but I don't think it is the primary grind angle that you need to change, but rather you would need to be honing a back bevel on the blades to change the cutting angle.

[Harry72]

I think you will overload your machine...

[martrix]

Like Harry said, its not a good idea.

Freshly (professional, Jalor) sharpened blades, 0.5mm final cuts on slow feed and wet the surface to be cut with a wet rag should minimise tear out.

Get yourself a good Makita 9924 belt sander and leave 0.5mm on the thickness for sanding to a perfect finish. That is how its done the right way, albeit usually sanded with a large drum sander in a few minutes.