A while back I posted a thread about a panel raiser plane I was working on. I was rehabbing the plane and changing the profile to a straight bevel from a curved one. My current project is the first time I've had a chance to use it on a "real" panel. It worked very well on the cross grain and the "right way" grain but I had a little trouble on the reverse grain side of one panel. No matter how fine I set the iron it wanted to tear out on a thumb-sized area where the grain reversed around a branch eye. So I stopped planing short of a full profile and used a sanding block to finish that side of the bevel. I was doing two panels for two doors and the other went fine even against the grain. Lesson I learned from this was look more carefully at the stuff I choose for raised panels--or be prepared for trouble. First, I cut the panel to size so that it has room to move in the grooves. The only other preparation was using a wheel marking gauge to strike lines to mark the depth in the edges and the width of the bevel. I went back and knifed the outline of the center to form a clean edge for the bevel since the plane doesn't have a nicker. In the photos the panel has been prefinished.
