Barely Scraping By Pt. 1

This episode of the WoodWhisper is brought to you by, Festool.

(Music Playing)

Marc Spagnuolo: Welcome to Episode 14 of the WoodWhisperer video podcast. I am your host Marc Spagnuolo. And today I am going to show you how to sharpen a card scraper.

Now if you are not familiar, a card scraper is simply a small piece of steel that has a slight bur on the edge that allows you to scrape the surface of a piece of wood. You can produce very fine shavings just like a finely tuned hand plain. But with this, you have a lot more control. Let me show you.

(Scrapping Sound)

Now if you are not familiar with the use of the card scraper, there is a great video in FineWoodWorking.com by Bryan Bugs. He does an excellent job of demonstrating scraper techniques and I will provide that link to that video in the write-up.

Now sharpening a card scraper is one of those things that alludes both knew and experienced with workers alike. And why is it so confusing?

Well perhaps it is because there is so many ways to do it. There are numerous products on the market and a ton of article floating around. But, different methods work better for different people. And, this is one of those situations where too much information just causes confusion.

My recommendation is to find a simple method and use it. If you want to get fancy later, go ahead. You can only step back through tried and true techniques. Once you have your first successful sharpening, it is like a light bulb goes off and you just realize what all the fuzz is about.

I even know guys who have sworn off sand paper and use scrapers exclusively. Now you do not have to go that far, but having some finely tool scrapers in your tool cabinet will save you time and money as well as improve the quality of your work.

All right so let us dive right in.

Preparing a card scraper is a three step process. First, we file the edge so that it is perpendicular with the sides. Then we hone the edge so that is nice and smooth and then we burnish the edge which results in a fine bur that does the cutting.

So let us start by filing the edge. I like to use a fine Single Cut File for this operation. I also use a sharpie to make the edge of the scraper and in that way, we can mark our progress. So when the red is gone, the edge is evenly filed.

You can do this operation free hand but I am going for simplicity here so I recommend making a file holder added some scrap. Just make one or two curve cuts with your table saw so the file fits snuggly inside. You only want the file to go in at about half way and it is like to file in place to make it super easy to file our edge in a perfect 90 degree angle.

I secure my scraper in the bench vise and I work on the top bench with a red sharpie.

You notice that all the action shots in this video are done without my standard background music. I did this so that you get the full experience of scraper sharpening.

Without clear sound, it will be a little more difficult for you to determine the amount of pressure that I am using during certain operations.

Using my fingers to support the scraper, I make as many passes as necessary to remove all the red ink.

(Scrapping Sound)

The result is a smooth 90 degree edge.

Now that we have a nice 90 degree edge, we have to hone it.

This means using sharpening stones or sand paper to sharpen the edge. We can actually apply what we know about sharpening chisels to this situation. A chisel is sharpened by flattening the back side first and then honing the bevel.

If the back of the chisel is not perfectly flat, we can never really have an optimal edge in the same rules applied here. We have to hone the side of the scraper first and then we can hone the edge. But that is an off a lot of steel to hone so, here is a trick I just read about on an article by Chris Worts.

If we raise the back of a chisel just a little bit, we effectively reduce the amount of steel that we need to flatten. In this means that the edge will be perfectly 90 degree but honestly it is close enough. And, it takes far lesser time to do the work.

I just use a piece of melamine as a shim when I do the honing.


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