Power sanding. Hand sanding. Planing. If you want a board to be ultra smooth and begging to be touched, you have to prepare it properly before the finish. While these three options give very good results on many boards, for very trick pieces with swirling, interlocking or other wacky grain, sometimes the tool you need is exceptionally simple.
A card scraper is such a deceptively simple tool – a piece of spring steel with a burr turned on the edges. While it’s simple, the work it does smoothing difficult to control woods leaves many woodworkers speechless.
This week – do you use card scrapers on your woodworking projects? Every time or just occasionally?
Tom,
I tend to break out my card scraper the most when I’m trying to smooth a joint between two pieces. In fact, I like scrapers for.this so much, I just bought three more yesterday.
When do you use yours?
Hey, I’m asking the questions here! 😉
I bring it out when the grain of the wood is so gnarly, the low-angle Veritas smoother chews up the pieces. I’ll ‘abrasive plane’ those boards and then sweeten them up with the scraper.
I use it on wet turned pieces, particularly where tear-out is a problem. Works great!
Card scrapers is the salvation but it is essencial to know how to use and cleverly sharpen them. I wish to share with all of you my method I hope you enjoy it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPdLf6sNez8
I used one extensively for the first time on my most recent project which used Curly Maple. I will definitely be using it regularly. Sharpening was an ordeal so i’ve had a scraper in my shop for years but it never saw the light of day … until I learned the Todd Clippinger quick & dirty sharpening technique. I’m sure purists will cringe BUT this method works very well for me. Here’s a video http://www.woodtube.ning.com/video/the-easy-way-to-sharpen-a-card