cleaning/ facing off old railway sleepers

[pootie439]

My boss has decided he wants to replace the old kitchen garden raised bed boards with a load of old railway sleepers he got as a job lot but he wants the front edges to be smoothed down. They are iron hard creosote impregnated oak and very lumpy. I'd need to hire something and I'm thinking maybe something along the lines of a concrete floor scaler but I'm worried it would just clog up all the time.
Has anyone had this problem? All ideas gratefully accepted

Thanks Pootie

[The Builder]

Mmmm ........... most people just put them down as they are Pootie .......... I can't think why he should want a "face" on them. You could use a blowlamp to take the "hair" off them (sticky-outey splinters of wood).................. or maybe an electric planer ....... preferably one with re-sharpenable blades because there'll be a lot of bunging-up :o(

[4getmenot]

my dads putting sleepers in garden at moment as they are, why put old sleepers in and change them.

[ELVIS68]

Good luck to him, railway sleepers are tough as fook, I pity the person who has to do this job!

[alavahalf]

It's sounds like a job for the devil himself .... if you hire an electric planer, I'm sure you will ruin it as it wont cope with the tar... and nobody would run it through their saw mill as it will ruin the blade.

If he wanted a smooth face he should have bought new sleepers...!

[spacechimp]

Try pressure washing one to see how that works at removing the tar...

[The Builder]

Just had a thought Pootie ................ hire a sand blaster, or a pressure washer with a sand blasting attachment. That's the method used by professional cleaners to get paint and grime from internal oak beams.

[AlBags]

Neither planer nor blasting will work.
Blasting will eat away the timber before the tar.

Only way is to torch them and scrape off everything. Then blast to take out burning.

[Clanad]

Probably too late now, but one really needs to rethink using used railway ties (as they're called here in the U.S.) any where near plants of any kind much less vegetables. The material used to preserve the wood is fairly toxic and always leaches out into the soil. Just a word of caution.

If it's too late to change, I'd at least lay black plastic under them...