Re: Sanding maple difficulties

Everyone has experienced it.  It's tearout.  Happens only where you are
cutting uphill (rotating down into the gouge, actually) and where you're
taking too broad a cut.  Two places, opposite sides of the piece.

That's one of the big reasons why I like forged pattern gouges for the last
few sweeps.  If you rotate the gouge so that the portion engaging the wood
is almost vertical, steadying with a mild rub of the lower portion of the
gouge, you can sever fibers cleanly in almost any curve by using an
appropriately sized gouge.  This demands a close toolrest, a sharp tool, and
patient cutting.   When I'm finishing on hard maple the shavings are almost
like threads.  I put the rest just below the center, keep the handle of the
gouge almost as high as the nose, and begin the cut with a slight downward
motion of the nose when entering the cut.

Reason you see it so easily on hard maple is the tendency of the wood to
burnish when sanded with too much heat.  I like my flex shaft, steadied on
the toolrest, just kissing the surface with the disc.  Sands cool and
quickly, though I would be real careful about grits 0f  80 or coarser,
because they can grab, even in 2" diameters, hard enough to twist your wrist
severely.  If you see any shine on the surface prior to 400 or so, stop,
raise the grain and break the hardening of the surface with a wipe of water,
and resume sanding after it dries.   Don't press!



"Denis Marier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Lately, I have experienced difficulties when power sanding maple bowls.
> I do not know if it's a bad lot of wood or something else maybe white
> fungus?
> I may not have the correct word to describe the problem.
> After sanding from 60 to 400 grit and going back several times these white
> areas are still showing up. Its look like the grains of the wood are going
> in the opposite direction. I can also  describe it as hard white paste
> between rings at random location. Sometime, the white areas are found at
one
> and two locations outside  the bowl and maybe one spot inside the bowl.
The
> bowl could be as glassy as a mirror and when I apply tung oil the white
> areas turned out darker and reflect poor workmanship? Sometime I become
> apprehensive to sand too much.  I wonder if anyone else has  experienced
the
> same situation.
>
>
>
>