Sharpening Woodturning Straight Scrapers

Video Transcript

"Scrapers are ground somewhat differently than the gouges or the skews. With a gouge and a skew you want a very sharp area. With a scraper, you actually want to have a little bit of a burr. Scrapers best perform when you're at about an eighty degree angle. With the square scraper, you take the flat edge and grind it with just a slight curve to it. The reason for this is you don't want to have to try to take out a full strip of wood that wide. You only want a smaller, no more than about a quarter of an inch. And you take your side and it will be ground at about a ninety degree angle. This will give you some relief as you go into the side of a container that you won't hit the base before you're ready to. You set your tool rest up again to give yourself an eighty degree, about an eighty degree angle and rotate your scraper through. When you see the sparks coming over the top, you'll know that you've brought it, brought the edge up. What you will find with the square nose scraper, where it will actually start up at the top. As you go, as you go over time, this edge will can't down slightly and this edge will get slightly longer. That's acceptable with this because you want to use this edge to clean the side and this edge to clean the base."