Birdseye Maple question

[Steve Ash]

A friend of mine (Bruce) is a logger in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and also owns a sawmill, while up there building a 32 x 44 garage for a customer the past three weeks,Bruce asked me to take home some of his birdseye maple to make some bookcases for his wife. The carcase will be made out of maple plywood and the face frames and raised panel doors (at the bottom of the bookcases) will be made from the birdseye. The question I have is how to make the birdseye face frames and doors without risking the tearout from the "eyes" of the birdseye? My thought process tells me to first saww all stock to size and run through my drum sander instead of my planer to achieve final size and smoothness....any input/suggestions?

[Steve Clardy]

I usually surface the stock taking 1/32 passes, to within a 1/16" of the final size, then drum sand to final size, which takes several passes. 4-6

[tod evans]

steve, you`re on the right track using a sander, i`d use a fine tooth saw blade too....even if you burn the stock cutting it the eyes will be intact after sanding.....a standard rip blade tends to pull out the eyes......tod

[Steve Ash]

Also, how will it affect the raised panel doors in regards to using the shaper cutters?

[Steve Clardy]

Also, how will it affect the raised panel doors in regards to using the shaper cutters?

Make several passes when profiling the panel edges.

[tod evans]

it`s a crap shoot even with the best insert cutters on the planet running spurs for every leading edge birdseye will be a gamble.....you can try and stabilize them with epoxy but then you`ve gotta finishing nightmare.. you could make the actual panels out of straight grained maple then apply the birdseye as veneer? this would be the aproach i`d use if it where me doing the job.....tod

[Steve Ash]

I guess I'll try the light passes approach on the shaper cutters unless they make wood filler in birdseye maple

[Stuart Ablett]

The few times I has some nice figured wood to put through the planer, I took really light passes, and I lightly wet the wood before hand (LIGHTLY!!) I found this really helped with tear out.

I wonder if this would work with the profile cutting too?

Cheers!

[Per Swenson]

Holy Moly Tod,

I didn't think anybody else did this,

I actually thought I would go and become the laughing stock

of the prim and proper woodworking set if I mentioned the heresy.

Listen up, West systems epoxy, long cure hardener,Acetone,

thin it like paint, no like heavy water. Mask the reach of the cutter

on the board. Paint it on, let it dry, shape away in incremental passes.

Last pass, real light coat. You would be amazed at the twisty figured

stuff that can be tamed in this manner. This deal is for those money pieces.

not 20 doors.

Per

[Steve Ash]

This afternoon/evening I ran all the face frame stock through my tablesaw with a fresh blade. I cut it about a light 1/4" wider than the final size I wanted to achieve, then after all stock was cut I ran it through my drum sander with "VERY" light passes. It took a lot of time to do it this way, but the results were just what I had hoped to achieve.....absolutely no tearout, just nice smooth face frame stock.

I'll be posting pictures when I get further along with this project....stay tuned.