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I just ordered a Virutex from Amazon. Be here in a couple days!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

At that pricing, opportunity cost/cost of labor for a pro might suggest a purchase, but we usually just made up a custom scraper from scrap saw plate. An old, kinked or damaged saw plate is a dollar or two at a flea market and we used them as stock for all manner of custom tools. We cut to rough shape with a hack saw, kissed the edges with a mill bastard to square, then filed or ground whatever edge profile was needed with rounds, saw files, and the odd needle file.

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Did any of you guys get your Virutex, edge scrapers yet?

I ordered a couple, one for a friend.

Unimpressed and can't recommend them. Not near ready for prime time out of the package. Rough edges all around, inconsistent, radii.

All I can say positive is it will be easier to make a decent one out of this than to start from scratch but only if you are good with files and have the ones you would need to establish good edges and radii.

I'd feel guilty sending one to my luth friend w/o fixing it first. That idea backfired.

And they both have identical imperfections so whatever cutting method used to cut them out needs some work. They would be great handouts at a trade show -- for FREE.

In the end the $80 carbide one might be the tool that works.

Hard to take a picture of tiny shiny stuff but maybe you can get the idea here.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

I did get mine but haven’t even opened the box yet.

If you take any pics during or after tuning it up please share!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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More bad news I'm afraid. Thought I'd try and fix one up a bit.

Pulled out a nice new fine, smooth cut file and went to work. Half a dozen strokes and the new file just glided across the scraper. I thought maybe it had a hard chrome finish, so bore down a bit harder. No dice.

Flipped the file over and all I succeeded in doing was burnishing over the teeth on the file, nice, shiny, and dull. I cherish good files so it wasn't a bad file.

Looks like they are very good at hardening!!! To bad they didn't refine the cutting edges before hardening.

$20 Christmas tree ornaments.

Sounded like such a handy tool. If anyone has better luck, please post, I hate giving up.

Carborundum grinding wheel does cut it. But how are you going to refine the tiny radius? Maybe some small diamond files. That $80 one is looking better and better.

It does round over edges but more like a file than a scraper, looks like it's back to sandpaper in this shop, till I make one or shell out $80.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

The $80 one probably works well since it is a Festool. Figure $40 for the tool $40 for the Festool name

And yes, I have some Festools and like them very much but they are expensive.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yeah, pretty disappointing. I was only ever planning on using it to remove the lion’s share of the material normally remove by sanding. It may serve that purpose just fine.

M

I am surprised the Virutex tool isn't better made. All of their stuff I have used was first rate. They make a lot of tools for the cabinet trade for working P-lam materials, so the scraper may be intended to remove the last little burr left from routing countertop material. That would need a well hardened metal to hold up for any length of time.
Most beading scrapers/scratch stocks are used to shape the desired profile, but not necessarily produce a finished surface. An eighth inch roundover bit in a trimmer will give a uniform radius, but most of us would still smooth it with sandpaper before finishing.
The Virutex scraper appears to be machine cut and hardened with out any further refinement of its edges. It may work fine for its intended purpose (removing the last little burr and glue from a P-lam edge) but less so for fine wood working. As with many hand tools there may be a "learning curve" to using it. Some of the simplest appearing tools I have used required me to improve my technique to get acceptable results from them.
And all else fails, it might make a nice looking Christmas tree ornament...

Now for the good news --

edit -- You can get small dia grinders of all sizes and compositions from Foredom so sharpening shouldn't be an issue. https://www.foredom.net/product-category/burs-bits-cutters-buffs/abrasive-points-stones-discs/ Scroll down. Probably where mine came from.

Not ready to give up, I cleaned up the angles on the scraper leading into the cutting radius carefully on a typical grinding wheel, just trying to remove the roughness so they didn't cause any unwanted scratches. I found a couple 4mm dia fine grain white mini grinders as might be used in a Dremel. 4mm was perfect for polishing up the 2mm cutting radius. Took the other mini grinder and reduced it's size to 3mm and then reduced half of it to 2mm with a wheel dressing stone. I used them to polish all the cutting radii, and it worked great. First pic is of the tools used if you look around a bit. Second pic tries to show the high level of polish in the tiny cutting area.

Tried them out on some hard maple and they work pretty darn nice shaving off curls of wood and not just wood dust. They are good steel and grind kinda like M2 tool steel.

So they are fixable if you want to look for the mini grinders. No idea where I got mine -- that's what happens when you've been collecting tools for 70 years.



It is hard to photograph and hard to see but if you look at the cutting area it is mirror bright. (It's better than it looks in the pic.)

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Thank you for an affordable alternative.

I know I said I wouldn't but curiosity got the best of me so I ordered one of the Festool scrapers.

I'll check it out and let you know how well it works, or not. It wouldn't be the only over-priced tool in my inventory, anyway, if I don't like it I can always return it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Got the Festool scraper. As usual with Festool it comes in a nice box and is nicely finished.

Did ok on ebony, got chatter on hog. Pretty much as expected. The flat end is slightly convex for leveling edges I suppose; I prefer my Caruth scrapers for that. In the end the Festool is just a scraper, I will continue to use sandpaper.

I could see where it would be handy on laminate countertops. Would probably work on plastic bindings.

It was worth a try but I don’t see it being very useful in my shop. I’ll be sending it back.






Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Just got the Virutex.... It looks underwhelming. I see now that it was cut out with some kind of flame or on a waterjet. An EDM would leave a much smoother edge. Also, the face of the material was surface ground before - should have been after. It will need work to be truly useful.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

but it comes with its own systainer? I'll bet Alan is working on this now. I'll wait for the Carruth version. (spelling edit)

Ha, I sent it back so I’ll wait too Mike.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The 'Carruth version' that I use is a piece of a card scraper that has had a bite taken out of one corner. The two straight edges inside the bite come together at a bit more than a right angle, and that's radiused off with a diamond jeweler's file. I put tape on the two flat surfaces to help keep from marking the top/back/sides in use.

Love it.

So I just got mine in (the Festool one) a week or so ago ... and got to try it out on a guitar with Macassar Ebony bindings. In short, I love it. Very sharp and works incredibly well for me. Everybody has certain ways of doing things but for my approach ... it has just made my life much easier. Here's why ... I'm able to get an exact and perfect radius everywhere. I'm also able to easily control how much of a radius I'm adding.

This thing wouldn't work at all on softer bindings -- like Koa, Maple, etc ... This really is probably only effective on Rosewood binding or harder.

I filed a 45 degree bevel on the binding first and then used the 1mm and then 1.5mm radius. Then followed up with 150 grit to smooth it out and then hit with 220 grit. Previously, I used a roundover bit in a laminate trimmer and then followed up by hand. You can of course do all this by hand but I've found that because of the curvature of the body, it is difficult to perceive how much you are really radiusing and the end result for me has always been a lot of extra time getting things exactly even and consistent. So this tool works really well for me and surprisingly, ended up being a game-changer for me. Of course, modifying a scraper is always an option but since this thing is made of carbide and very nicely machined, I think it's worth the price if you're building a lot.

Toonces wrote:
"This thing wouldn't work at all on softer bindings -- like Koa, Maple, etc ... "

Interesting. I've used my home-built unit on curly koa, as well as curly soft maple, walnut, and so on, with no problems. The trick with curly wood, as usual, is to run the scraper at a bit of an angle to the curl. and switch angles and directions often, while taking a light cut. Maybe the one you got is sharpened too agressively?

Hi Alan,
It may be a "technique" thing then. I feel like this Festool scraper would really bite into curl or softer woods leaving a lot of ridging. I may be wrong tho' ... I just tried it on some Mahogany and found it to not work as well. Perhaps making sure to take the lightest pass possible would yield better results.

So maybe it is better to say ... works mindlessly on hard woods but may require a bit of experimentation with softer woods. IF you're getting good results with softer woods, then I'm sure this can used in a similar fashion. Thanks for the insight !!!

Pretty much my results as well. That's why I said it's just a scraper; it behaves as you would expect on the softer woods and, yes, I do use scrapers on softer woods. I wasn't trying to say the Festool was a poor tool and I expect it would do fine if you wanted to take the time to work with it. I'm already happy with my sanded corners so I elected to stick with that.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Probably I'm getting a smaller burr on mine, but sharp. It's harder to get a really sharp edge on carbide than it is on steel.

Running CNC lathes; the carbide, ceramic, and CBN inserts we used NEVER had a sharp edge. They were called out in the catalog as having, .002 to .010" radius or so on the edge. Back in the OLD days; we hand ground HSS bits for turning. They could take a beating, turning crankshafts for punch presses, and cutting the worn teeth off Bull Gears with a tool having a huge rake, and big radius. Those were sharper; but not for too long. Maybe 60-100 sfpm, and not 600-1000 sfpm.

Now ENDMILLS would be sharp; carbide OR HSS. But HSS always seemed sharper. They have micro grades of carbide, and ceramics; but HSS is always sharper. At least it always seemed to be. they won't cut hardened steel for long though.

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