Bert2368
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A card scraper (cabinet scraper) is an old fashioned wood working tool used for smoothing surfaces before finishing, made from a piece of springy sheet steel, usually somewhere around 50 RHC.
Scrapers can be had as rectangles for flat surfaces and in various curved profiles for contours- Or you can modify one with files, grinding & etc. to any custom profile you need.
It is a technique requiring developing a "feel" for what the tool and the wood are doing, plus you need to learn how to form and maintain that cutting edge. It is a little bit more demanding of time and attention than just handing an inexperienced person a powered sander, but has certain advantages-
It's QUIETER and any wood removed stays right about where you scraped it off, instead of blowing away and ending up in your hair, eyes, lungs and generally all over the room.
It's SLOWER than a belt sander, orbital sander, etc. using medium or coarse grit paper. You can ruin a piece with power sanders PDQ, I certainly have done so. Any mistakes you make with a scraper will happen slowly, giving you more time to correct your technique. This is one reason why people re-finishing nice wood pieces like to use scrapers.
Grit particles from sandpaper will embed itself into the surface of sanded wood, where it will dull any cutting tools used later on that piece of wood- Such as knives used on a cutting board (my particular reason for doing this project).
Sandpaper wears out and you need to buy more. A scraper will last for years, you just re form the "burr" (cutting edge) in a fashion similar to steeling a knife when it slows down. Also similar to knife sharpening, you will occasionally get past the point of merely re forming the "burr" and need to start over. You then stone the edge square and smooth and form a new cutting "burr" with a hard steel rod.
The infamous edge grain board (the larger maple board on bottom). It has been a few years since it was smoothed, there are a lot of knife marks, a few small chips have even come off where knife cuts intersected. Look on the left for the worst of this dammage.
Here is an example of what a scraper can do. Very thin wood curls may be scraped from the surface of the wood, almost like the shavings from a hand plane.
Part way through the process, the burr is getting worn out, the shavings are more like sawdust, time to re form the edge!
Finished scraping! The board is 24" X 30", I spent a couple of hours doing this job, including re-learning how to form the burr, experimenting with different angles to get the results I wanted. I could likely do it again in half that time, now that my hands remember what to do.
Now to finish:
I dampened the wood to "raise the grain", then gently steel wooled the surface to remove any "fuzzies", followed with a tack cloth to get any remaining sawdust or steel wool fragments off.
Applied several coats of mineral oil until the freshly exposed, raw wood stopped sucking it in (I recall this needing about 5 coats). Then buffed on a beeswax/oil mixture similar to "board butter".
And she is done, just in time for Sunday dinner.
I did this job in the kitchen. I did not need to wear a dust mask or vacuum clean the kitchen afterwards- and the person sitting in the dining room for most of the process didn't complain about the noise.
Scrapers can be had as rectangles for flat surfaces and in various curved profiles for contours- Or you can modify one with files, grinding & etc. to any custom profile you need.
It is a technique requiring developing a "feel" for what the tool and the wood are doing, plus you need to learn how to form and maintain that cutting edge. It is a little bit more demanding of time and attention than just handing an inexperienced person a powered sander, but has certain advantages-
It's QUIETER and any wood removed stays right about where you scraped it off, instead of blowing away and ending up in your hair, eyes, lungs and generally all over the room.
It's SLOWER than a belt sander, orbital sander, etc. using medium or coarse grit paper. You can ruin a piece with power sanders PDQ, I certainly have done so. Any mistakes you make with a scraper will happen slowly, giving you more time to correct your technique. This is one reason why people re-finishing nice wood pieces like to use scrapers.
Grit particles from sandpaper will embed itself into the surface of sanded wood, where it will dull any cutting tools used later on that piece of wood- Such as knives used on a cutting board (my particular reason for doing this project).
Sandpaper wears out and you need to buy more. A scraper will last for years, you just re form the "burr" (cutting edge) in a fashion similar to steeling a knife when it slows down. Also similar to knife sharpening, you will occasionally get past the point of merely re forming the "burr" and need to start over. You then stone the edge square and smooth and form a new cutting "burr" with a hard steel rod.
The infamous edge grain board (the larger maple board on bottom). It has been a few years since it was smoothed, there are a lot of knife marks, a few small chips have even come off where knife cuts intersected. Look on the left for the worst of this dammage.
Here is an example of what a scraper can do. Very thin wood curls may be scraped from the surface of the wood, almost like the shavings from a hand plane.
Part way through the process, the burr is getting worn out, the shavings are more like sawdust, time to re form the edge!
Finished scraping! The board is 24" X 30", I spent a couple of hours doing this job, including re-learning how to form the burr, experimenting with different angles to get the results I wanted. I could likely do it again in half that time, now that my hands remember what to do.
Now to finish:
I dampened the wood to "raise the grain", then gently steel wooled the surface to remove any "fuzzies", followed with a tack cloth to get any remaining sawdust or steel wool fragments off.
Applied several coats of mineral oil until the freshly exposed, raw wood stopped sucking it in (I recall this needing about 5 coats). Then buffed on a beeswax/oil mixture similar to "board butter".
And she is done, just in time for Sunday dinner.
I did this job in the kitchen. I did not need to wear a dust mask or vacuum clean the kitchen afterwards- and the person sitting in the dining room for most of the process didn't complain about the noise.
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