Cabinet Scrapers Are A Must For Any Woodworker – ToolsRUs

Cabinet scrapers are tools used by woodworkers to remove layers of wood from boards. Milled lumber is not always perfectly square and true. It is up the cabinet maker to ensure that the wood they are working with is well formed, or else his wooden creations might end up irregularly shaped. This tool is fairly easy to re-edge, so it is not something that must be replaced very often. For things like tabletops, many woodworkers swear by this tool. When used correctly, it largely eliminates the need to sand a surface because it levels and smoothes wood at the same time.

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A cabinet scraper is little more than a flat, rectangular-shaped piece of high carbon steel. Usually no more than 0.6 or 0.8 millimetres thick, scrapers come in a few sizes and are typically five or six inches in length. You use the long edge of the scraper to remove wood shavings. In order to be useful, a scraper must have a burnished (rounded) long edge forming something called a burr. The burr is nearly impossible to see since it is only 0.05 millimetres or less high. New scrapers don’t have a burr already made, so you will have to form it. It only requires a few tools, and it is quite easy.

First, you will need to file off the old edge if you are applying a new burr to an existing scraper. If the scraper is brand new, you can skip this step. Remove an old burr by running a file along the broad side of scraper – on both sides. Then, flatten out the narrow edge to remove the slight roundness in the metal created when you made the last burr. You can use a file for this, too. To create the new burr, run a burnishing tool made from hard carbon steel at a slight angle to the edge over the entire length of the tool. This will cause the narrow edge to round a bit while creating a wave-like hook.

To prevent any gouges from marring the wood, always use cabinet scrapers with the wood grain. An edge will get dull in about ten minutes of use, so frequent sharpening is required. Once you notice dust being produced instead of solid wood shavings, it is time to remove the old burr and create a new one.