If you use a scraper, what we’ve got here is a piece of steel whose hardness is about the same as the blade on a hand saw. And in the sharpening process, what happens is that we actually generate a small burr here on the edge of the scraper. So when I cut with this, what I do is I push on it with my thumbs, and with my fingers, I’m pulling the corners back so I’m introducing just a slight bow to the scraper. It’s the bow portion of the scraper that contacts the material and then I tip it down to a slight angle and that allows the burr that’s created on that edge to cut.
Now, one thing that I like about this is that the glue is very prone to clogging and abrasive like a sandpaper and if I at least can take all the glue off with the scraper, then I’m saving my sandpaper because I won’t get that clogging problem.
The other thing is that I’m producing these nice curly shavings instead of the dust that a sander produces. So I get less stuff airborne. The downside to this is that it does get warm just from the cutting process so it’s heating up right here on my thumbs. I also have to hold these corners back. I have to push on this. So if you don’t do a lot of work with your hands, this could be pretty hard on your forearms. Pretty soon, you start looking like Popeye just from trying to hold onto this thing.
So this tool is very similar. The difference is that everything is done for you by this holder. It’s got these big handles to hold on to but then you would use it the same way. So the thumb skewers put a curve onto the scraper card itself. So the way that I would usually use this is that I would use the scrapers, I’ll take off all the glue and I’ll start doing some leveling between any boards that might not be quite even. Once the work with the scrapers is done, then we’re ready to go on to the sander and we’ll use that random orbit sander to finish the leveling process.
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