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A card scraper or cabinet scraper is a woodworking shaping and finishing tool. It is used to manually remove small amounts of material and excels in tricky grain areas where hand planes would cause tear out. Card scrapers are most suitable for working with hardwoods, and can be used instead of sandpaper. Scraping produces a cleaner surface than sanding; it does not clog the pores of the wood with dust, and does not leave a fuzz of torn fibers.
Card scrapers are available in a range of shapes and sizes, the most common being a rectangular shape approximately 60 mm × 180 mm (2 in × 7 in) and with a thickness of 0.6 to 1.0 mm (0.024 to 0.039 in). [1] Another common configuration is the gooseneck scraper, which has a shape resembling a french curve and is useful for scraping curved surfaces. For scraping convex shapes such as violin fingerboards, small flexible rectangular scrapers are useful.
Similarly, a card scraper can be used to manufacture complex mouldings by cutting the negative of the desired moulding into the steel, e.g. through filing or die cutting. A scratch stock is a profiled card scraper that is held in an adjustable stop.
Scrapers are normally made from high carbon steel. There are many manufacturers who provide scrapers in a wide variety of styles. Many woodworkers prefer to make their own card scrapers by cutting them from old hand saw blades.
Card scrapers are sometimes used in working with ceramics, where they may substitute for the more traditional wooden rib. The scraper is also useful for trimming damp or dry clay. Such a scraper, the nearest one to the camera, is shown in the image at right.
The cutting component of a card scraper is the burred edge of the scraper. The burr is a sharp hook of metal which is turned on the edge of the scraper by burnishing with a burnisher or steel rod. A file or sharpening stone is used to joint the edge of the scraper before burnishing. Cabinet makers typically joint the edge square, or at a right angle to the face of the scraper, which allows a fine burr to be turned on both sides. Luthiers often use a beveled edge, which allows a more aggressive burr, but on one side only.
There are a number of variations in the process of turning the burr, the choice of which is down to personal preference. However the basic concept is that the burnishing rod is held against the edge of the scraper at a slight angle and drawn along the edge a number of times until the burr is created. One variation involves holding the rod flat against the side of the scraper for the first few passes to create a burr pointing away from the edge and this is then rolled back down by drawing the rod along perpendicular to the scraper.
With the burr properly turned, a scraper will produce miniature shavings resembling those from a plane. If only dust is produced, either the scraper is not sharp, or not being used correctly.
In use, the card scraper is grasped by the fingers, one hand on either side, and tilted in the direction of travel. The degree of tilt controls the effective angle of the cutting edge, which is the burr. Practice is required to find the correct angle. In addition to the tilt, the user will usually flex the scraper slightly by holding it at the edges with the fingers and pressing in the centre with the thumbs. The slight flex causes the corners of the scraper to lift slightly thus preventing them from marring the workpiece.
The scraper may be drawn towards the user or pushed away, although some woodworkers claim that pulling the scraper towards one can cause it to dip, resulting in an uneven surface.
The main drawback of a card scraper is that the usage is a difficult skill to master. It takes a bit of practice to turn the burr correctly and then the scraper must be presented to the work in the correct fashion. Also, due to the friction created in use, the card scraper can become hot enough to burn fingers.
Some woodworkers use the term "cabinet scraper" instead of "card scraper" for this tool. While this is widely accepted a separate tool also exists, called a cabinet scraper, which differs from the card scraper in that it has a beveled edge like a plane. Calling a card scraper a cabinet scraper could cause confusion between these tools.
A variation of the card scraper is the scraper plane which consists of a hand plane body in which a card scraper is mounted. There are also various styles of holder which can be used for this purpose. These simplify the use of the card scraper and alleviate the problems associated with heat.
Burnishing jigs and other accessories are available to assist in turning the burr, which makes the card scraper more accessible to the novice.
Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning.
A chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal by hand, struck with a mallet, or mechanical power. The handle and blade of some types of chisel are made of metal or of wood with a sharp edge in it.
Drill bits are cutting tools used in a drill to remove material to create holes, almost always of circular cross-section. Drill bits come in many sizes and shapes and can create different kinds of holes in many different materials. In order to create holes drill bits are usually attached to a drill, which powers them to cut through the workpiece, typically by rotation. The drill will grasp the upper end of a bit called the shank in the chuck.
A block plane is a small metal-bodied woodworking hand plane which typically has the blade bedded at a lower angle than other planes, with the bevel up. It is designed to cut end grain and do touchup or finish work. It is typically small enough to be used with one hand.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
A Japanese kitchen knife is a type of a knife used for food preparation. These knives come in many different varieties and are often made using traditional Japanese blacksmithing techniques. They can be made from stainless steel, or hagane, which is the same kind of steel used to make Japanese swords. Most knives are referred to as hōchō or the variation -bōchō in compound words but can have other names including -kiri. There are four general categories used to distinguish the Japanese knife designs: handle, blade grind, steel, and construction.
In archaeology, a uniface is a specific type of stone tool that has been flaked on one surface only. There are two general classes of uniface tools: modified flakes—and formalized tools, which display deliberate, systematic modification of the marginal edges, evidently formed for a specific purpose.
A spokeshave is a hand tool used to shape and smooth woods in woodworking jobs such as making cart wheel spokes, chair legs, paddles, bows, and arrows. The tool consists of a blade fixed into the body of the tool, which has a handle for each hand. Historically, a spokeshave was made with a wooden body and metal cutting blade. With industrialization metal bodies displaced wood in mass-produced tools. Being a small tool, spokeshaves are not suited to working large surfaces.
A blade's grind is its cross-sectional shape in a plane normal to the edge. Grind differs from blade profile, which is the blade's cross-sectional shape in the plane containing the blade's edge and the centre contour of the blade's back. The grind of a blade should not be confused with the bevel forming the sharpened edge; it more usually describes the overall cross-section of the blade, not inclusive of the beveled cutting edge which is typically of a different, less acute angle as the bevel ground onto the blade to give it a cross-sectional shape. For example, the famous Buck 110 hunting knife has a "hollow ground" blade, with concave blade faces, but the cutting edge itself is a simple, flat-ground bevel of lesser angle. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to put a "hollow grind" onto the actual cutting edge of the blade itself, which is a very narrow and small bevel.
Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is known as a turner, and the skills needed to use the tools were traditionally known as turnery. In pre-industrial England, these skills were sufficiently difficult to be known as "the mysteries of the turners' guild." The skills to use the tools by hand, without a fixed point of contact with the wood, distinguish woodturning and the wood lathe from the machinist's lathe, or metal-working lathe.
A miter saw or mitre saw is a saw used to make accurate crosscuts and miters in a workpiece by positioning a mounted blade onto a board. A miter saw in its earliest form was composed of a back saw in a miter box, but in modern implementation consists of a powered circular saw that can be positioned at a variety of angles and lowered onto a board positioned against a backstop called the fence.
A countersink is a conical hole cut into a manufactured object, or the cutter used to cut such a hole. A common use is to allow the head of a countersunk bolt, screw or rivet, when placed in the hole, to sit flush with or below the surface of the surrounding material. A countersink may also be used to remove the burr left from a drilling or tapping operation thereby improving the finish of the product and removing any hazardous sharp edges.
In prehistoric archaeology, scrapers are unifacial tools thought to have been used for hideworking and woodworking. Many lithic analysts maintain that the only true scrapers are defined on the base of use-wear, and usually are those that were worked on the distal ends of blades—i.e., "end scrapers". Other scrapers include the so-called "side scrapers" or racloirs, which are made on the longest side of a flake, and notched scrapers, which have a cleft on either side that may have been used to attach them to something else.
Japanese carpentry is carpentry in Japan. It was developed more than a millennium ago through Chinese architectural influences from the 12th century. It is a form of ancient Chinese wooden architecture and woodworking joints that involves building wooden furniture without the use of nails, screws, glue, or electric tools.
A sharpening jig is often used when sharpening woodworking tools. Many of the tools used in woodworking have steel blades which are sharpened to a fine edge. A cutting edge is created on the blade at the point at which two surfaces of the blade meet. To create this cutting edge a bevel is formed on the blade, usually by grinding. This bevel is subsequently refined by honing until a satisfactorily sharp edge is created.
Jointing refers to the process of filing or grinding the teeth or knives of cutting tools prior to sharpening. The purpose of jointing is to ensure that all surfaces to be sharpened are of a consistent size and all imperfections have been removed.
Knife sharpening is the process of making a knife or similar tool sharp by grinding against a hard, rough surface, typically a stone, or a flexible surface with hard particles, such as sandpaper. Additionally, a leather razor strop, or strop, is often used to straighten and polish an edge.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
A kitchen scraper is a kitchen implement made of metal, plastics, wood, rubber or silicone rubber. In practice, one type of scraper is often interchanged with another or with a spatula for some of the various uses.
A burnisher is a hand tool used in woodworking for creating a burr on a card scraper.