Today we're gonna... (goose honking)
Today we're gonna learn how to shar... (goose honking)
Today we're gonna learn how to sharpen a...
Today we're gonna learn how to sharpen a goose...
a gooseneck scraper... (goose honking)
a gooseneck scraper.
♫ Hit it! ♫
(funky music)
Scrapers are a fantastic tool,
they save you a ton of time in terms of sanding
and finish prep, and really you don't have to use a lot of
the lower grit sand papers if you just
have a good set of sharp scrapers.
Some people even use them and go
right to a finish which is kinda cool.
Either way, they come in a lot of shapes and sizes
and if you know how to sharpen one of these guys,
the regular square ones, you have all the tools
and knowledge you need to sharpen a goose neck scraper,
but people seem to be intimidated by these.
So let me just show you my methodology, there's a lot of
videos out there on scrapers, here's another one!
Now if you're new to this process,
here's a quick review using a piece of wood as an example.
If this were the scraper, we're really looking to have
a nice clean set of edges here.
The edge is clean and the two faces are cleaned and honed,
and you have a sharp corner here.
So what we'll do is we'll take a burnisher that
sort of pulls that steel out over the edge
and causes it to overhang a little bit.
And then we'll fold it down by going this way,
and when you fold it over you create
that little tiny hook and that hook is
what cuts the wood as we scrape.
Right, so the better you hone these surfaces the finer
that hook becomes and really the sharper it is.
Alright so let's do this with an actual scraper.
So step one is to prepare the scraper.
Now if the scraper's pretty mangled,
maybe it's been used and hasn't
been sharpened for a long time,
you may need to reestablish the
squareness of this edge and one
of the best ways to do it is with a file.
Alright now just draw the file around
trying to keep it perpendicular to that edge.
And I also don't want to create any flats
in this curved surface, so it's important not to
just continuously rub in one area.
I just like to move right on through a curve like this.
And I'll go all the way around, one section at a time.
Now, what do we do in an area
like this, where it's an inside curve?
Well you could certainly use some sort of a
round file if you wanted to, but I actually
don't use this part of the scraper, so I just ignore it.
If I can't reach it then it's not very helpful to me.
Now if you're having trouble balancing the file
and keeping it nice and perpendicular,
you can use a block of wood like this.
Just cut a little groove in it that fits your file,
and then put this guy down like so,
and one of two ways, either take this to the scraper
in the vise and run it around that way,
or you could just take the scraper to the file like so.
Keeping pressure along the side,
we know it's gonna stay nice and square.
And when you get to an edge, run it
off the edge like so, and you can get
a little bit closer to that inside surface.
After the filing, the next step is to use sharpening stones,
'cuz we're really trying to hone this edge similar to
what you would do with a blade of some sort, right?
So I've got a little diamond plate here,
it's got a coarse side and a fine side,
and this one comes in a Tommy Mac kit
that they're making now from Pony Tools.
And it's nice and handy because it's a really small size,
very easy to maneuver around like so,
and when you're done with the coarse, you can move
over to the fine side and quickly refine that edge.
They also have these easy lap deals,
these things are pretty cool, they're nice and small
and you can get into small spaces.
But once again, if you're having trouble
balancing this on here, you could
use a method with a traditional stone.
Once again, using some kind of a wooden block,
I'm gonna support the scraper, keep it nice and square
to the surface and just rotate it around like so.
I'm only gonna do two rounds of this honing,
one that's gonna be coarse and one that's fine.
And what those number are, honestly
I don't think it's really that important.
Now this isn't something you're gonna sharpen
up to five, eight thousand grit.
I guess you could, I just never see the need to.
So once I have the fine sharpening done on the edge,
I wanna get rid of any material that may have
folded over during that sharpening process.
There's a lotta, you just kinda feel it
with your finger, it should catch a little bit.
So we're gonna get rid of that right around the perimeter,
by sharpening close to the edge.
Dry this off and now we're gonna be ready to burnish.
The burnishing is done with a burnishing rod,
and the reason you have a specialized tool like this
is because you need this to be significantly harder
than the metal that's in the scraper
so we can bend the metal to our will here.
So I usually just buy something that's
called a burnishing tool like this.
There are other options out there,
people sometimes use other tool handles
that seem to do the job for them,
but this is what works for me.
So I'm gonna add a little bit of
lubrication here, just some honing oil.
Usually I just put a little bit on a paper towel, and then
put that on the burnishing rod, and around the scraper.
That's just gonna reduce friction,
make it a little bit easier to work this out.
So first I place the burnisher right on top like this,
and then I'm gonna draw it to a slight angle down this way.
Just a degree or two, but it is almost flat on the surface.
I'm just gonna rub it a few times on the edge.
This is the part of that process that draws that metal
out over the edge we just honed.
And even though this is a curved surface,
you can see this process is no different than what you
would do with a regular square card scraper.
It's just maybe a little bit less graceful,
(snickers) you kinda move around.
Now this might be difficult to see,
but right here at the edge you should see the light
reflecting slightly differently at the very edge there.
It should be a little bit shinier,
and that shows the work that we've done.
We're looking for that to be nice and consistent
as it goes all the way around the scraper.
Now I'm just gonna place the scraper
into my vise and we can fold the burr.
Basically we have that little bit of material
that's been pushed out over the edge,
now we're just gonna fold it over into a nice hook.
There's a lot of schools of thought on how to do this,
but I find it simplest to just go perpendicular
and then add a couple of degrees.
Alright and I'm just gonna draw the
burnisher over the edge when I do this.
Now you see what I'm doing here,
I just went twice and I'm feeling with my finger,
because if I feel the burr starting
that's gonna tell me how far to go.
Now there's definitely a light burr there,
I'm gonna give it one more just for
good measure, and that's a good burr.
I'm gonna loosen it up and continue working around the edge.
Now a very common question is "how much
"pressure do you put when you do this work?"
Well it's kind of a tough thing to answer
'cuz we're all, we have different levels of strength
and what we consider a lot of pressure.
I actually do consider it quite a bit of pressure,
but most of the time it's because I wanna make sure
I don't slip, so I'm holding the burnishing tool
to avoid slipping and cutting myself on the scraper.
The actual amount of pressure I'm
putting here, it's really not a lot.
You wanna feel for that burr, if you
don't feel the burr yet, go again.
Feel again, if it's not there, keep going.
That may tell you if you have to go more than
two or three times to fold that burr over,
you might not be putting enough pressure.
Now some people will do a third series of steps
where you put the burnishing tool
at about a 45 degree angle and go again.
I usually don't find that to be necessary,
and I can feel with my fingers there's a really nice
burr on there, so let's put it to work.
Now here's a piece of white oak
that should scrape quite nicely.
Alright that's working pretty well
and that's what you're looking for,
you want shavings, you don't want dust.
If you have dust, you may not have sharpened it properly,
you may be holding the scraper wrong.
And that's the thing that most people don't realize is
depending on how you sharpened your burr
and how you folded it over, what angle it is,
you may have to move this guy around
to find that sweet spot wherever it may be.
But usually as you drag it across you can change your angle
and you can find the ideal spot
as it starts to catch in the surface.
But that's a beautifully sharpened
scraper that's working really well.
Now the same methodology will apply to
not just gooseneck scrapers but curved
scrapers of any shape or size.
It doesn't really matter once you know
how to do this and your realize
it's just like sharpening a square scraper,
you find out it's a whole lot easier than you think.
The other thing is, you don't necessarily
have to repeat this entire process every single time.
Card scrapers don't stay sharp for very long so it would
suck to have to do this entire thing over and over.
So what I like to do is grab the burnisher
whenever I notice it's starting to go on me,
and I will redo the burnishing process.
I won't redo the honing until maybe I've done
the burnishing two or three times.
There will be a point when that burnishing just doesn't
work anymore and you've gotta do the rehoning,
which is okay but at least I've got this to sort of
extend the life of the scraper a little bit
before I have to do a full scale honing over again.
Card scrapers, great stuff but those
gooseneck scrapers just aren't really all that
different than the square ones.
So keep your scrapers sharp, save yourself some money so you
don't have to buy all that sand paper, thanks for watching.
(acoustic guitar)