: Spidey,

: I have my Georgian Bay project with a first layer of glass on it. I found
: hand planing of the strips to be very difficult. Cedar is so soft and the
: strip grain changes direction with each piece so its impossible to not
: tear material due to planing the wrong direction.

It's definitley NOT impossible as folks do it all the time, but, it takes experience and technique to know when, where and how to do it successfully.

I did successfully use
: my hand held power planner on a very light setting. I brought most of it
: to fair with a delecate use of my belt sander followed by the random
: orbital for the 80 grit final once over.

: I had lots of trouble with the satin glass 3.25 I read the recent thread by
: George and his advise helped. My problem was in getting small air pockets
: under the glass between it and the base coat of epoxy. I ground much of it
: out this morning and laid out another layer of glass this afternoon. Once
: you start grinding on it, everything turns to glass white and its very
: hard to locate the problem pockets. I have my fingers crossed but I sure
: wouldn't recommend to any beginners to use the satin glass. Its just too
: darn hard and fussy to work with. By the time I've laid all the layers
: I'll probably feel better about it but, "who needs the grief"?
: Its not like glassing is the funnest part of these projects.

Hi Guys

Not to interfere with all ya'll's fun here but I would have to stick my 2 cents worth in at this time.

I have done lots of planing over the years and have had problems on some jobs and not on others. I have cut across grain, end grain and just plain ole smooth vertical grain and some times it works and some times it don't. I have had no problems with the plane since I started using the scarey sharp technique, even on end grain. But, I always use the side slip method when the grain looks even the slightest bit wavy.

In the past, when I had problems, usually I attributed it to sharpness of my tools, and they seemed to be sharp enough to touch. When the blade is at a steeper angle, the sharpness really comes into play and the only way to keep them from chattering was to either do a quick pass over a stone or sideslip the tool till I could get it worked on.

Also, I've never seen two people that think the same way as to how sharp a tool is. Everyone has their own idea of just what is " Good Enough " and use their own technique in using the tools. ??? I think argueing this is a mute point.

This has not even considered the density, moisture content or grain configuration of the wood in question, so there are too many factors that can be different to make any sort of comparison.

Nuff said for now, hope this helps. Probably not, but.... oh, what tha.....Hey

Rehd