Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello all and in particular fellow scrapers. I almost exclusively use scrapers now to get the backs and sides smoothed out before finishing. But I cannot seem to get the softwood tops perfect. The scraper seems to dust up more then curl up the wood and looking with a 10x loop I can see fibers tearing out.

So I am wondering if others out there have any suggestions. Perhaps a particular scraper or sharpening technique or maybe just use sand paper?

Regards.

The softer the wood, the sharper the scraper needs to be but yes. softwood is more difficult...... dust usually means it's not sharp enough.

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Dave
Milton, ON

A light, sharp burr is the key, along with a light touch.

Even so, the scraper will cut the harder latewood grain more than it does the early wood, which will tend to compress. After a while the earlywood swells back up, and you end up with a sort of 'corduroy' effect. This is very much sought after by the violin crowd, since that's what Strad did. On guitars it's usually seen as a defect, so be prepared to defend yourself.

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Go to this page http://www.lmii.com/CartTwo/Video.asp and go to the 2nd to last entry at the bottom. All about scrapers. Hope that helps!

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Tracy
http://www.luthiersuppliers.com

Thanks for the advice. The video is good and lots of others to see too I sharpen a bit differently though. What I do is file the 90 deg face just like in the video but I then file off the burr and hone it with a stone. Then I lay the scraper flat and draw out a bur with the burnisher. Seems to me that just using a file would have micro nicks along the burr making the cut a bit rough. But it looked good in the video and is a bit easier to do too.