Posted by I’ve read about card scrapers and have appreciated their utility, but for whatever reason they occupied the little pigeon hole in my head reserved for advanced techniques to get to one day.
Well, after struggling with some large pieces of timber with little bits of reversing grain that tore out rather badly, I was either going to have to hand plane the area down another mm or so with my #4 and hope I didn’t induce more tear out, or have a crack at this elusive card scraper wizardary.
First the card. I picked the worst of the batch of dodgy panel saws I bought a while ago (the ones where the teeth had been sharpened like a knife) and cut out a couple of cards.
For the burnisher I had a broken carbide end-mill cutter, which I whipped up a handle for with a spokeshave.
To sharpen I followed Derek’s tutorial.
It took a couple of attempts before I got proper shavings, but wow, it was so much easier than I had thought. I only wish I had given it a whirl a long time ago.
I will need to order a proper set of cards though, as the pitted saw plate doesn’t give a very clean edge. And given the cost, it is certainly one of the cheapest tools that can be purchased new!
So thank-you to everyone who had contributed to discussions about card scrapers on the forums, and documented their techniques and trials.
Lance
April 2020
