Hey Pal
When you need to burnish, turn a hook?
You run the edge of the scraper and the sides as well, up and down sharpening stones (or sandpaper). First coarse, then fine and maybe even finer.
When the edge has been fully polished 90 degrees, you take the butt end of a large drill bit, or a real jewelers burnisher and roll the edge.
Warning, this takes practice.
The finest scrapings are made this way, and the smoothest finishes. But its a pain in the butt!
I seldom use a burnisher at all.
Better to just.....................
"Drawfile and go!" <tm>
I realize everybody so desperately wants scraping to be more complicated than this, entire books are dedicated to it and gadgets galore and expensive yuppie goods sold across the nation!! Hooray for commerce, buy lots of stuff!!
Fear tactics over simple wood scraping are employed so universally to sell more products, that nearly everyone believes it now.
I was looking over the Lee Valley catalog the other day, and there was the familiar selection of scrapers. 5 bucks apiece, perfectly available.
Then it goes on to offer gadgets and gee-gaws and leather wallets and .............you can squander 200 dollars in no time, and you still can't scrape!!
And these guys are the most reasonable!! Wonder what $$$$$$$$$$$ crap Bridge City is hustling for scraping now?
It is actually exceedingly simple guys. Lay the scraper flat in your hand and go over the face of it to remove the old burr in case there are still traces. Flip it over and do the other side,(in case you couldn't see that coming). There's 26 seconds shot to hell right there. heheheh
Put it in the vise with the edge about 1/4" higher than the jaws. Drawfile a good edge. Yes a single cut file is better. Watch you don't hollow the middle leaving you sharp corners to dig into your work. I like a slightly convex, or crowned edge myself, but feel free to get out the optical comparator and scanning electron microscope if you have time to waste on the perfect straight edge.
Take it out and use it.
What could be easier?
I guess this doesn't mean that it works itself. There seems to be a matter of skill involved since I see so many struggling with a scraper that should cut fine.
I don't have the slightest trouble piling up sacks of fluffs whether face grain or side or even end grain and
I don't do it for show, I do it for work.
Take a good stance, leaned slightly forward. Wrap your finger around the ends with your thumbs in the middle down low, lean the scraper blade forward a few degrees
Push!
You think we are screwing around here? This is goncalo alves wood. Hard tropical wood from So America. Notoriously tear out prone. Look very closely at the wood behind the scraper. You couldn't sand it this smooth in 1/2 hours work with a belt sander,
and you are looking at 22 seconds work!
Cast iron and soft steel I have scraped. Brass is reasonable easy. Bronze can be nasty, but then that's bronze which is engineered to be nasty, and tough! Aluminum scrapes like pine, gobbles so fast you can actually get yourself into trouble. Cherry, rosewood, ebony, plastics. All succumb to the scraper with relatively equal ease.
And it take 37 seconds to resharpen it when it does get dull!
I'll even use a dull scraper on small jobs about 1/2 the time, being a lazy sort. Pick it up and quickly feel for any trace of burr left and just use that little spot.
There is no mystery to scraper sharpening as badly as so many want to believe. Sometimes I feel like I'm giving advise on how to breathe air. Sharpening is not your problem, men. The mystery, whatever there is, seems to be in operation.
I once prepared a whole tutorial and my friends even shot a video of me doing it and me n Wik were going to put it up on a pay per view for a buck a download, (and it included at least some tips toward technique or operation) but we had trouble formatting the footage since everybody on my end was so computer illiterate (poor Wiktor had to try and deal with us) and before we could get it together the word got out and others quickly put up their complicated schemes (for 4 times the money),
and then pretty soon there were free sites all over the place too.
And they are all overcomplicated!! Its all so much easier than you are being led to believe!!
But you have to develop your working technique.
The scraper itself is of little consequence, it's you, your hands, your eyes, your style....
that performs the deed.
Oh PS, on the rare occasion when I do actually use a burnisher, the jewelers will sell you a pip for a dollar two fifty or you can use the shank of any high speed drill bit or a carbide pin.
yours Scott
