No, it wasn't eight tiny reindeer, it was snow, and lots of it! For those of you that don't get this stuff this picture was taken from an open door in the shop today and yesterday we had not one flake of snow anywhere to be seen. I'm not complaining but this does mess up the roads and causes quite a few accidents. I promised my wife I would pick up two things today so on go the boots and the hunt for the snow shovels. It is still coming down, looks like a white Christmas here in Maple. Once again I thank Northern Tool for my shop furnace...................
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This may be the lowest tech tool in any makers arsenal. It doesn't plug in, it possesses no real features other than it is steel. Heck, it may not even come in a package and the cost is around 5-10 dollars. They come from Sweden or Japan or North America, there are a few branded ones but in the end they are a rectangle of flexible steel. A good one will last three lifetimes, pretty good value.
What can I use it for? How does it work? Well a cabinet scraper is essentially a sharpened blade just like a plane or a chisel. It removes a very fine shaving and offers a real tactile feel to the user. You can remove your enamel with a scraper, you can remove glue after binding, it can be used to check strips and see if a mark is a worm hole or just a surface imperfection. Even working with nodes it gives you a safe way to scrape things without digging into the material. Like any type of blade it needs to prepped, the mill marks removed, the surface flat then sharpened for use and ultimately burnished to create the burr. Treat them carefully as they are a blade, this tool often gets chucked around and will get chips and dings so protect the blade when not in use. There is plenty of information regarding sharpening scrapers and it may seem confusing but learn to use and sharpen the lowly scraper. You won't be disappointed. A man who works with his hands is a laborer. A man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman, but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
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AuthorI am a cane rod builder and co-founder of Canadian Cane Archives
February 2019
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