A needlessly long musing about finish scraping. Right? Wrong!

Arch · 2006-03-09T01:04:27+00:00

Many of us came to woodturning by way of 'flat work' and had used cabinet scrapers on a relatively soft material. Also many of us came from the machine shop and had used hand scrapers on a relatively hard material. The softer wood required a small angle edge tool, the harder metal a large supporting edge angle, but both scraped not cut. The woodworker might follow his cuts with scraping then sanding & buffing, the metal worker by lapping & polishing, but both were abrasions. Furniture and metal craftsmen are likely to consider a scraper to be a fine sensitive tool used to smooth & flatten the inevitable imperfections of _cutting. Not so for many woodturners. Some will consider my statement as heresy. Don't we all 'know' that a proper _cut will produce a superior turned surface? Well sometimes, as in hollowing end grain or gouging out a bowl's insides, but right or wrong, I'm musing about _finish scraping. YMMV, but a timeworn analogy that explains my concept of cutting vs scraping: Carving roast beef on a board with a carving knife blade held relatively parallel to the roast is cutting --- cleaning up the grease and scraps off the board with the blade relatively perpendicular is scraping. In neither is the bevel really riding; it wouldn't cut. The same tool was used, but with different presentations. The former produces large thick slices of meat, the latter wisps of garbage, but I think the scraped board is left smoother than the cut roast. I had these misguided thoughts while learning to spot scrape an old lathe bed somebody (not me ,G,) had used as an anvil. I scraped very thin layers off the high spots. The spots were revealed by very gently rubbing the bed with a piece of plate glass covered with a very thin coat of bluing . Finally after repeated rubbing & careful scraping the high spots were spread all over the bed resulting in smoother flatter ways. Mercifully, I'll spare you the details of my poor attempts at 'frosting' the ways. :) Is that a little...

Mar 09, 2006 20 Replies

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Joe Fleming 20 years ago

Mac,

The burnisher I use for my turning tools is one I bought from Don Derry. It mounts on a bench or on a tool post. It allows you to burnish a hook in a rounded scraper edge pretty well. I use it for

3/16" tiips to 1-1/2" round nose scrapers.

Joe Fleming - San Dieog

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A needlessly long musing about finish scraping. Right? Wrong!

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