Scraper plane vs. Card Scraper
#18
In addition to the excellent advice you have already received, one more thing. The depth and aggressiveness of the shavings are controlled very differently. With the card scraper, it's your hand pressure, the force of your thumbs. It's easy and almost automatic to adjust how hard you push as you get feedback from the cuts. On the other hand, it's easy to set the scraper plane a little more aggressively than you mean to -- and there it stays. A small adjustment can make a big difference. Just a thought, from experience.
Best,
Aram, always learning

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Web: My woodworking photo site
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#19
The scraper plane can keep a very precise angle of attack -- which is nice if it's the right angle.  I find the easiest way to get there is to take the blade out of the plane and use it as a card scraper to identify the best angle, then set the plane to that angle.  Fine tune it from there to make it sing.  As others have suggested, the way you prepare the edge can affect the preferred angle of attack.

A minor exception to the idea that your surface is limited to the smoothness of your sharpening of the scraper can be found in some of the softer steel scrapers where burnishing square to the edge prior to turning a hook can smooth the edge significantly.  There are lots of things like this that many think are wrong, but I think are just finicky.  When I first tried a scraper, the standard advice was to turn a burr with a chromed screwdriver shaft.  I tried all my screwdrivers, and sure enough one of them worked.  The other ~12 didn't.  If you tell me you'd rather use a harder scraper (and burnisher!) and that honing it to a fine grit is a much more reliable way to prepare the edge, I'll go along with that.  But in certain circumstances you can make a short-lived but highly effective edge with a careful burnishing sequence on a filed or coarsely ground edge.

I have never seen a surface as rough as that from 80 grit sandpaper even from a scraper only filed and burnished.  But that may be because I've only used the softer scrapers that way. The blades in my scraper planes get honed properly.
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#20
While "sharpening" a card scraper with a file might work, it's not the method I use.  I hone the edge of my card scrapers the same way I hone my other edge tools.  I polish the edge to at least 8000 grit.  Then I turn the burr.  That's the method David Marks showed on one of his Woodworks shows, and I'm fairly certain that's the method that Chris Schwarz shows.  It's also the method shown in in Leonard Lee's book on Sharpening (albeit he stops at 1200 grit).  The file is really only intended to joint the edge of a card scraper, not sharpen or hone it.

If you are having to tilt your card scraper 45 deg to work, you've rolled way too aggressive a burr.  As already pointed out, the burnisher only needs to be tilted 5 deg (less aggressive) to 10 deg (more aggressive).

The tilt of the blade on a scraper plane is easily determined by removing the blade and observing what angle works best on the wood.  Then you match that angle when you put it back into the plane.  Go to Lie-Nielsen's website and search for the video on scraper planes.  Deneb shows this method.

I never really thought of the surface left by a scraper as the final surface before finishing.  You can plane without tearout by properly adjusting the chip breaker and closing the mouth of the plane.
Still Learning,

Allan Hill
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#21
Today at an estate sale here in Oregon I was talking to a man from Connecticut who was helping his parents with the sale. He seemed very knowledgeable about woodworking and was familiar with this forum. The subject of scraper planes came up and I mentioned my difficulties with the Lie Nielsen #112 scraper plane that I owned when I started this thread. I mentioned I did not like it because of the limited hand space behind the knob and I had sold it. Not much room for my hand if I tilt forward very far. Anyway he said that was a mistake and the Lie Nielson #112 should be thought of more as a bench plane with a very high angle, about 85 degrees. I wished later I had clarified whether he meant positive or negative on the angle. I had never heard of his idea. He said not to compare it to a card scraper. I think the Veritas comes with a blade you can camber with an adjustment while the thick blade that's in the Lie Nielsen is rigid.

Anyway I'm going to get a Veritas scraper. Hoping someone has one they want to get rid of and finds me in swap and sell. Otherwise I will have to make Rob Lee happy.
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#22
I use a scraper plane insert I bought from LV to convert and old number 4 smooth plane to a scraper plane and it works quite well and I follow it with a card scraper.

[Image: 05p0601s2.jpg]
http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.as...&cat=1,310
George

if it ain't broke, you're not tryin'
Quando omni flunkus, moritati.
Red Green

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#23
(12-16-2016, 10:15 AM)Rob Young Wrote: Sounds like you are rolling the burr too far around on the scrapers.  The burr only needs to be just a little bit "forward", maybe a maximum of 5-7 degrees of hook. 

A polished edge does indeed make a finer burr.  But even more important to me, the burr lasts longer.  My theory being that the scratches left by the last polishing medium are where the fractures begin.  Larger and more scratches, larger and more (quickly) the burr fractures and falls away.

Also, taking time to consolidate the edge (a bit of work hardening) with the burnisher before rolling the burr helps me.
Great advice here.  I finally learned this how to shoot for that 5° burr angle.  Its an easy thing to mis-do.

For newbie, its difficult to really appreciate the angle working from above, but I found if you kneel down and look horizontally you will get much closer to that desired angle.  A trick is to put the scraper in a jig so that when placed in the vise such if the burnisher handle is resting on the benchtop, the angle is achieved.

I've learned from William Ng that a burr can re restored with a couple quick strokes of the burnisher without going all the way back to the stones.  You can't do this when the hook angle is too steep because the burr is fracturing off much quicker.
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#24
Basically, a scraper plane is merely a holder for a scraper blade, so you don't burn your fingertips in use.
Yes    Stanley  #80 also would be a scraper plane. 
Wink

Real Olde School would be a piece of freshly cut glass.
Big Grin    One can even cut the glass into the shpe of the molding being smoothed.    Easy enough to "sharpen" ....just cut a new edge.  
Laugh
Show me a picture, I'll build a project from that
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