Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper

Re: Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper

Frank D. in Montreal


>Hi Denis,

Flatter surface (more registration) and less chatter (extra weight and more damping).

Re: Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper

David Barnett - SW Florida


>By the time I was finally facile at adjusting and tuning my #112, I no longer needed or used it so much as I thought I would and became quite comfortable with the #80 for nearly everything but toothing, which is pretty much why I keep the scraper plane -- that, and because I like fiddling with it now and then. Either can give you heavy curls or tissue wispies, of course. But I can vary the setup on my Primus or L-N #164 to a fairly high planing/scraping action and follow with the #80 (shallow burr) and/or card scrapers or glass to get it flat and smooth before final burnishing and finishing. Nice to have both but I'd start with the #80 or other side-handled scrapers.

Re: Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.


>Oh, I have the Veritas cabinet scraper, and tried the Stanley #80, both are good but I like the Veritas better.

I'm just wondering if I would gain much from getting a scraper plane...

DC

Re: Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper

Frank D. in Montreal


>I started out with the Veritas cabinet scraper, it is nice, but then I got a LN 112 a few years later (picked one up used for a good price). Now I almost never use my Veritas, other than to clean up my bench top.

Adjustability is an advantage...

David Barnett - SW Florida


>...esp. to adapt to different wood characteristics. Sometimes the slightest change of angle can get the plane to bite the wood. Whereas the #80 is about technique in preparing the edge and turning the burr AND setting the blade height and tensioning, the #112 excels in allowing a very finely set up blade to bite without scalloping the wood to the same extent as one expects and tolerates with the #80. It also means one can ameliorate a coarser or less consistent burr by finding the bite angle without having to bow the scraper quite so much. Finally, one can get a bit more mileage from the same burr by chasing the bite angle until this tactic wears out. One can also explore broad camber, softer blade steels and other variants, but I'd stick with angle adjustment at the beginning. With the #80 I can turn the burr with a little homemade tool a couple or three times until I have to go back to the file or stones, of course.

If you plan to flatten and scrape large Nakashima or conference table slabs, especially row-y, curly, burly slabs, yeah, I'd opt for the #112. As Frank D. noted, the extra mass and ability to apply solid and steady pressure can be a real plus. And for toothing, they kick butt -- not just for veneer gluing prep but to shred the gnarliest surfaces for easy shearing with a high-angle smoother. They're wonderfully versatile tools and there's an aesthetic in appearance and use that is worth the reasonably low cost. On the other hand, the #80 will do a good job but requires a different technique and more followup. If you can afford the scraper plane, get one. They're satisfying and do a superb job.

Re: Power

Thom D

Different steels for scrapers

David Barnett - SW Florida


>I mentioned softer steels for scrapers. I should probably expand this somewhat. What I mean is that some scraper blades are tempered fairly hard and I don't think this is always a good thing. Older blades were often tempered less hard which allowed for nice refiling and honing and really promoted a nicely formed burr. The burr was work-hardened through consolidating flat 'drawing-out' strokes and subsequent turning strokes. Surprisingly, these burrs seemed not to require any more refurbishing and refiling than the harder temperings. These simpler steels (equiv. to the W1, W2, and "10..." series) were easier to prepare, produced excellent results and were altogether more pleasant to use, in my opinion. Tougher steels tend to harden more deeply (usually slower quench profiles) whereas W1-type (also known as 'Old-File' or O-F) yields a harder skin with a somewhat softer core, even in thin sections. Anyway, that's my take and my preference.

I noticed one thing...

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.


>Both of you mention the 112, what about the 85? The head instructor at Rosewood swore by it, and it did look impressive in the demos, although it seemed less "adjustable" than the 112.

Opinions?

DC

Don't have one. Never used one.

David Barnett - SW Florida


>Doesn't mean it isn't the best thing since haggis-n-'neeps frozen dinners or the underwater double-belled euphonium, though. Sure looks handy for drawers, boxes and built-ins. But it's as simple as that. Never bought one. Might now.

haggis-n-'neeps frozen dinners - LOL!

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.


>Where are the totties? :)

Never seen those when I was in Scotland... Heck, it took us two hours just to find a restaurant in Glasgow that served haggis... but then it was in August...

DC

Burr vs no burr?

woodburnbob


>David, thanks for those posts. You're obviously a 112 connoisseur. I'd be very interested to read what you might have to say about what's going on at the wood-blade edge interface in use: with a burr versus without a burr.

That is, I'm interested in your insights and mental images of what things look like at a microscopic level and how that permits a 112 blade to do what it does. I'm thinking mostly of those hard LN 112 scraper blades.

Re: I noticed one thing...

Paul Kierstead


>I have an 85. It is quite versatile, but very narrow for doing anything panel sized. If I had my time back and only intended to buy one, I would have bought a 112. Actually, I have tried several times to buy the LV one, but they keep managing to be out of stock every time I try....

Re: Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper

HC Sakman @ Victoria, BC


>Very quickly...

On flat surfaces where you need "reference" for consistency, plane's body does the trick.

On curved surfaces, you want to control it with your hands.

It's all about control.

Chico...

Re: Different steels for scrapers

Thom D


>You mention some nice classic steels there. Still out there though harder to buy as stock, well at least for me.

Harder and softer scrapers are just a trip through the household oven away from being just the way you like them.

I like your point about workhardening. I have found some good hard card scrapers I liked like the Sandvick, or the really thin one LV sells. Probably the big Kuntz is some dodgy soft stuff, and it works well for me.

Re: Burr vs no burr?

David Charlesworth


>I often wonder if a card or scraper plane blade, with a hook, works because it is a sharp blade with an imperceptibly close set, very steep chipbreaker. The C/B, being the flat side of the blade, is at a high angle. i.e. the shaving has to climb a slope of about 90 degrees, in the 112 and 80 setup, if I have worked it out correctly..... the transition between sharp edge and C/B might also be a very tight radius cutve?

It does not seem to have any relationship to the sharp square edge scraping mentioned in Bruce Hoadley's theory, "type three chip production", which is what happens with certain carbide circular sawblade teeth, and the old restorers trick of scraping with the sharp edge of a piece of broken glass.

Any views please?

The rebate cabinetmakers scraper is a very nice tool, simple and scrapes right into a corner!

David Charlesworth

Re: Scraper plane vs. cabinet scraper *LINK*

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>In your Pop WW tip you mentioned jointer knives, which I thought was a pretty cool idea. Along those lines, the Japanese hand held scraper blades are, as are other Japanese blades, much thicker than western scrapers. I recently received the blade linked below, haven't had a chance to try it yet, but you (impersonal) may want to try it.

Also, Japanese scraper planes are relatively cheap (see Hida, http://www.hidatool.com/woodpage/plane/scraper.html ) and are wonderful to use. And also [sic] there are most of the HNT Gordon planes who's blades can be reversed to bed at 90� + for scraping (see http://www.hntgordon.com.au/ ). These also work wonderfully, and are recommended for such use by none other than Lyn Mangiamelli in his famous high angle planes review. If you opt to do the latter, I recommend getting a second blade, since using one as a scraper pretty much dulls it for using as a smoother or anything else.

Pam


Japanese scraper

Re: Burr vs no burr? (rambling & unedited)

David Barnett - SW Florida


>WoodturnBob wondered:

"That is, I'm interested in your insights and mental images of what things look like at a microscopic level and how that permits a 112 blade to do what it does. I'm thinking mostly of those hard LN 112 scraper blades."

And David C. wrote:

"I often wonder if a card or scraper plane blade, with a hook, works because it is a sharp blade with an imperceptibly close set, very steep chipbreaker. The C/B, being the flat side of the blade, is at a high angle. i.e. the shaving has to climb a slope of about 90 degrees, in the 112 and 80 setup, if I have worked it out correctly..... the transition between sharp edge and C/B might also be a very tight radius cutve?"

The idea of a turned (a term I'll use to designate a steel scraper with a drawn and turned burr) edge scraper as microplane and chipbreaker makes sense to me. However, I don't think it's the only way a turned scraper works, inasmuch as an unfurled shaving can show failures at varying and much larger intervals than the distance of cutting arris to flat of the blade. Of course, when one examines a turned burr at magnification, curvature from arris to supporting metal is also apparent, as you supposed. This seems to correspond to the simpler steels I mentioned and makes me think it's compensatory to harder, tougher steel choices. Since variations of species, dryness, grain pattern and direction, scraper angle, burr length & angle, metallurgy, oh -- just about everything one would want to complicate matters -- will affect outcomes, I'm thankful I can just use these 'simple' tools without really knowing what's going on. Ignorance beyond the utilitarian basics is probably bliss.

I've noticed, though, when unable to overcome my curiosity, that shavings commonly show evidential micro-'tearing' when viewed at moderate stereomicroscopic powers (22X through 45X, say). Hard maple exemplifies this well in what appears to be a cycle of tearing and cutting. Now I'm talking about a very fine and sharp turned burr, pulled rather than pushed, maintaining as high an angle as possible that still bites the wood. Common wisdom has it that higher angles on harder woods gives a finer cut with less tear and longer burr life*, which bears out your observation-speculation, I'd say. It seems that the burr initially cuts the fibers, descends to its limit, cuts and tears, rending then compressing the severed tissue, producing those very soft and thin shavings, like waves of seafoam, which burst into fluffy bits (technical term) and dust when blown upon. These are the thinnest shavings I get with the finest not-too-turned-if-at-all burr. More burr, more bite and I clearly get more of the chipbreaker effect. Species, density, grain orientation all play so much into results that's were lucky we can develop a feel and a varying technique to make it work freehand. Which leads me to appreciate that a scraper plane, while restricting the finesses of a card scraper, gains in constancy of scraper blade presentation and planar reference. I prefer using my #112 for largish panel surfacing at fairly coarse settings to freehand surfacing and set my #80 coarser still for not-so-challenging and less-figured woods. Since I haven't done much large work in the last few years, I haven't used my #112 nearly so much as before.

"It does not seem to have any relationship to the sharp square edge scraping mentioned in Bruce Hoadley's theory, "type three chip production", which is what happens with certain carbide circular sawblade teeth, and the old restorers trick of scraping with the sharp edge of a piece of broken glass."

On hard materials I think steel scrapers without burrs do a nice job, scraping and burnishing, if one accepts a shallow bite. I use a set of HSS blades with back bevel on my jointer to get this effect on woods I'd never otherwise pass over the cutting head.

I'm not entirely convinced non-turned scrapers are always burr-less, but rather sans an intentionally cultivated burr. More than once I've prepared a scraper (untouched by my burnisher) got a very fine shaving but later discovered (under magnification) I'd inadvertantly left a very fine burr.

A broken piece of glass may work differently than the square-edged non-turned steel scraper, and for that matter, than a ground glass edge, as well, usually presenting a 'best' edge due to the plasticity of glass and manner in which it is cut or broken. Vitrification produces an amorphous non-crystalline mass subject to flow and deformation (think hard candy or toffee). So when one scores, taps, and snaps a sheet of glass a usable burr is often formed opposite the scored edge, which itself may or may not be usable. Sometimes the tap doesn't run fast and clean, so the compression and closing of the score on the slight upward lift prior to the sharp downward snap stretches and turns a burr just prior to separation**. Sometimes this turns one way, sometimes the other. Which piece side of the glass and which edge will scrape better is hit or miss. If the arris is presented upturned and ahead of the remaining plate, it's pretty much analogous to the steel version. A piece of glass cleanly broken or snapped without a burr will also scrape, of course, and this will produce the type-III shaving. Even without a burr, glass can flex enough to produce a slightly gouged shaving, which can be exploited by using thin glass microscope slides until the edge is worn or (more often for me -- tape all but the cutting edge) catastrophic failure occurs. I still use glass a lot, esp. on horn, ivory, resins, some leathers and very hard woods.

A happy medium between burred and non-burred scrapers is where the edges are burnished to draw a burr, but then merely burnished back to form a T-shaped profile without intentionally lowered the limbs of either side, but I find this more useful for scraping away unwanted coatings or resins than for shaving the wood itself.

And I'll abruptly stop here as I have to move more accumulated toolage, flotsam and jetsam, detritus, and residual integuments to my new shop. Today, it's one of the drill presses, the bandsaw and inumerable boxes of stone and glass frit. Any tenous logic, incontinuities, nonsensical prose, idiotic semantics, and uncharacteristic innanities are derivative from this moving experience and stresses resulting from it, my advancing age, and ever-diminishing contact with objective reality.

*Narrow burrs last longer than broader burrs, too, which are more easily levered-up and straightened.

**This can even occur to lesser degree on slabs of crypto-crystalline quartzes. I have favorite scrapers of thin chrysoprase that are still going strong.

Burr vs no burr...Hey I resemble that

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond, CA


>Remark;^). I have a Stanley 80 and 112 with Hock blades in them. I don't put a burr on them. Thinner blades need them of course.

Re: Burr vs no burr?

Thom D


>"I often wonder if a card or scraper plane blade, with a hook, works because it is a sharp blade with an imperceptibly close set, very steep chipbreaker. The C/B, being the flat side of the blade, is at a high angle. i.e. the shaving has to climb a slope of about 90 degrees, in the 112 and 80 setup, if I have worked it out correctly..... the transition between sharp edge and C/B might also be a very tight radius cutve?"

One could always look at the cutting edge end of things. One of the constituents of cutting power is edge thickness. The scythe might be a better example than comparisons to planes. With the scythe a very thin blade to start with, maybe 1/32", is further thinned by peening (cold drawn by hammer and anvil), and is finally sharpened. The sharpening is pretty cursory by woodworking standards. The scythe, like a card scraper, is made of softer metal to allow the peening, and the sharpening peening cycles are repeated often. The worker takes his stone and peening tools into the field to keep the edge in form. Maybe the soft metal and cold forming aspects of the scraper point to a similar cutting principle, of a sharpened feather edge. If Barnett is correct that the shaving is not breaking in accordance with the tighter breaker geometry, then my vote is for the increased cutting power.

WoodBURNbob, that should be (sorry!)

David Barnett - SW Florida

Re: Burr vs no burr? (rambling & unedited)

David Charlesworth


>David,

That was fascinating, Thank you.

David Charlesworth

Re: Burr vs no burr? (rambling & unedited)

William Duffield, on the Cohansey


>Brilliant, David.

Finally, some notions I've been contemplating have begun to make sense.

At a microscopic scale, wood is a bunch of hollow tubes stuck together with some sticky stuff. If we are cutting tubes that are normal to the surface, or that rise in front of the blade, cutting them cleanly is a rather trivial problem if we use a sharp, well supprted edge. However, if the tubes descend in front of the cutting edge, their stiffness tends to separate them from the lower tubes because the sticky stuff fails before the tubes colapse and fold.

The scraper works effectively by immediately crushing the tubes, and drastically reducing their mechanical strength, so that their structural rigidity cannot act at a distance in front of the edge.

Consider crushing an empty aluminum soda can by applying pressure at the ends. Consider the force needed to push and lift a row of cans from one end. If the first can colapses, the long range structural strength is lost. Consider crushing several rows of aluminum cans, aligned end to end, stuck together with sticky cola.

At a macroscopic scale, the effect on the wood fibers of the high angle forward face of the scraper is often called "oilcanning".

At scales much greater than the diameters of the fibers, for example, typical "chipbreaker" setbacks from the edge, this effect has never made much sense to me, but on the scale at which scrapers with burrs operate, the effect should be obvious.

A scraper with a burr should therefore produce a cleaner surface than one without a burr, by first cutting the tubes, and then crushing them before they can propagate tearout.

I find my #112 (a L-N), when properly set up, can perform significantly better with a burr than without one. Of course, unlike a card scraper, since the #112 gives less tactile feedback, and since angular adjustment of the cutting edge cannot be made immediately in response to performance, a #112 with a burr is much more difficult to get to work effectively than a card scraper. While a card scraper, or a #80, or a Veritas #112's performance can also be enhanced by bending the blade, while the L-N cannot, I don't think this is a significant advantage to either the #80 or the Veritas, because with either of these, you still have to stop scraping and make a static adjustment. A disadvantage of a card scraper is lack of consistency of cut, since it is guided manually. A disadvantage of the #80 (which is the same disadvantage of Veritas when using the thinner, bendable blade) is the increased tendency to chatter if the cut is set too deep or the tool is otherwise less than optimally tuned.

These observations are also rambling and mostly unedited. Discussion is welcome.

Re: Burr vs no burr? (rambling & unedited)

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>What you seem to be saying is that a void in the resistance makes it harder to cut off the non-void cleanly. If this is a correct interpretation, why do you think it more likely that this void causes crushing rather than cutting? If the blade is sharp, it should pick up the cutting after the void without any problem.

Pam

Setting

David Charlesworth


>I love the 112 with very small hook and slight camber of blade.

People struggle with the set up.

I advise using a thick scrap of ply, mdf etc under the blade when burnishing the hook. The scrap has a sloped edge at 75 degrees to help judge the finishing angle of the burnishing.

This then ensures that the blade cuts when kept close to the 20 degree forward lean of the stan 80.

bets wishes,

David Charlesworth