Joining Birdseye Maple Plates.

[Gilbert Fredrickson]

The little birdseyes are tearing out while shooting the edges. Is this a job for the "sanding beam" plane? The #5 plane I am using has a blade sharpened and polished to 6000 grit at 25 degrees with a micro bevel of 30 degrees and no bevel on the back of the blade.

[Nick Middleton]

I normally use a much higher angle when working on Maple with a figure or birdseyes. I also have a scraper-plane that works well.

If you can scrape it, then the sanding beam will be you're only other option.

[Michael Lewis]

Gilbert, have you tried taking a very light cut? Super sharp and light cut generally get the job done, but so will the sanding beam. Birdseye can be a pain, especially if you get into a hurry.

[Louie Atienza]

If your plane can do it, you might ty adjusting the frog to decrease the size of the mouth and see if that helps... Also it may help to have the plane at a bias or skewed relative to the joint, though that would not allow use of a shooting board....

[Adam Savage]

A further suggestion, if you are dead set on using your plane, would be to add a back-bevel to your blade. This should raise the effective pitch of the blade and allow you to tackle gnarly timber with less tearout.

Adam