Me Sharpening a Card Scraper

[glenn bradley]

There seem to be as many variations on this as there are woodworkers. Someone invariably posts William Ng's video which is great as are many others. For those with no special tools I started with some shop made stuff that still works fine. I also show commercial products which I was gifted and am happy to have.

I cut a through slot in a milled block of wood with the bandsaw to act as a holding aid. I cut a groove in another block to fit a mill file.

I was gifted the Veritas holder. There are others that are just as good. Benefits over the block of wood is the 45 degree reference surface for cabinet scrapers.

I still use the bandsawn block as a holder though

I file until I feel a full cut being made; usually 2 or 3 light swipes. I do all four edges as I find this useful.

I also stone my faces and edges. Many skip this step and that is fine. It takes just a few minutes and I get consistent results so it has become my habit. I use a DMT 'fine' stone since that is what I have handy.

I use a squared block of scrap to assure I am at a good 90 degree angle for the edges. This silly piece of ply has been around for longer than I can remember. I don't know why it hasn't delaminated long ago.

I am not removing a large amount of material here.

My shop made burnisher is a HSS Forstner bit that got lunched (cursed screw). I lopped the head off and set the shaft in a dowel-handle. The Veritas Tri-Burnisher was another gift (ya gotta love Lee Valley's Wish-List sharing feature) and is my favorite.

I lube the burnisher with a bit of light machine oil, pull ALL the edges out with 2 or 3 runs of the burnisher, turn the hook with a run of the burnisher flat along the edge once and at 5 to 10 degrees twice.

And I get light, wispy cuts that roll into little curl-worms.

 

[Darren Wright]

Thanks for the walk through and tips Glenn!

I finally started using my scrapers in the past couple of years. I've only sharpened them a few times, so looks like I may be re-visiting that process soon.

 

[glenn bradley]

You're welcome! I check mine by lightly dragging the top of a fingernail across the hook, It should peel a tiny bit of nail, I find that I can re-run the burnisher flat across the edge and then re-run it at 5 or 10 degrees and get some more use out of the hook before I file it off and start again.

 

[Rob Damon]

I normally put two levels of burr, a light one on the two edges of one long side and a heavy one on the two edges of the other long side.
Like having two grit levels of fine sand paper. One for with the grain and one for delicate cross grain.

 

[Darren Wright]

Filing a new edge makes sense to me now, I've tried burnishing them again after honing, but still didn't get a good even shavings

 

[Roger Tulk]

that's the way to do it. I've seen a Youtube video of some jackass doing it entirely wrong. He's getting dust, not shavings.