Thanks for the comments.

It sounds like you got some good coaching on your problem.

Feeding a board through the planer at an angle to the cutting heads is good advice for avoiding tear out on figured or problematic stock (it also helps to have a three cuter head and a slower feed on the planer). One other thing that can help with tear out is to lightly mist the surface to be planed with water to wet the wood fibers (don’t saturate the board, just mist it). When the board goes through the planer the fibers are more easily severed when they are moist.

As far as the card scraper goes, I feel the same as you – it’s probably the simplest tool there is, but it is extremely effective. When I first learned how to properly get a burr on the scraper and then made those first fine shavings, I could not believe how effective and easy the process was. Now, whenever I glue up a panel and need to smooth transitions at the glue lines, the card scraper is my tool of choice.

Of course, if you really want to get into smoothing boards/panels without power, you can always take the next step to a smoothing plane!

–Mark

I can relate to what you are saying about hand an power tools.

I had always been a power tool guy, but last year I was working with some figured wood on a project and I could not get it through the planer without ALOT of tearout! I was talking to a friend about it and he gave me a tip to put it through the planer on an angle to reduce the tearout. That helped a lot, but the best thing was using a card scraper on the wood after the planer. I was able to go in all directions with the scraper an in minutes I had removed all the remaining tearout. I have been a convert ever since!