When I recently built a low chest of drawers using Tiger (curly) Maple, I used a
bevel up low angle smoother with a 50 degree blade for an effective cutting
angle of 62 degrees--no tear out. I also tried a LN 4 1/2 smoother with a 55
degree frog but there was still tear out.

A super sharp high angle will do the trick.

Cheers,
John

“P.S. If you do not receive this, of course it must have been miscarried;
therefore I beg you to write and let me know.” - Sir Boyle Roche, M.P.

On Jun 8, 2017, at 2:40 AM, "yorkshireman@y...<mailto:yorkshireman@y...">mailto:yorkshireman@y...>"
mailto:yorkshireman@y...">mailto:yorkshireman@y...>> wrote:

The tear out though - you have a tricky time of.  To maximise the appearance,
you want a sliced, off the blade finish, but to remove tear out you feel an
abrasive may be needed.

If you have some test pieces, use them to check your techique.  essentially,
super sharp plane blades and a high ange, a very high angle, are the way to go,
then cabinet scrapers.  If you are not accustomed to using them, do plenty of
practice first, and again, especially practice resharpening.