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Plus, it makes shavings, if properly sharpened, not dust.

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I find that I have to be very careful scraping the top with any scraper. Sometimes, the edge will grab, lift, and tear a spruce fiber rather than cut it. The resulting ugliness is hard to deal with. Maybe some of the folks who have mastered scraping spruce could give us some tips?

One of my students had a book on 'how to sharpen everything'. In the section on scrapers he said, flat out, that it was impossible to scrape softwoods. So much for that authority...

The key with any scraper, any time you might hit a soft wood, is a very sharp, light burr. On a card scraper you hone it on a stone, rather than filing, and turn a small burr. On the heavy ones I like to lap the faces to get rid of the existing burr, and then rub the edge on the diamond stone. This gives about as fine a burr as you can get, and, because it's smoother than what comes off the grinder, it tends to last longer.

Other than that, the key to avoiding 'pie crust' edges on the top is to develop your tool chops. If you never hook the top, you won't have the problem. Easier said than done, of course....

Things will be going along great and then I catch just one fiber. The problem with tool chops is that there are so many that you have to have to build instruments. I will try setting up a scraper sharpened as Al describes just for spruce and see what I get. It seems like I'm always learning to sharpen. Conquering one skill just presents the next one to be learned.

Well, I have been following this thread and have decided to add a French Curve Scraper and the two Carruth scrapers. I'm sure this site saves me money, but I know I spend money reading this site!

But time and results are more important. I use my scrapers all the time... and more and more often as time passes. I have this device: http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.a ... &cat=1,310
for those who hate bending a scraper... it works great and I HIGHLY reccomend it. There are so many reasons to use scrapers. One off the top of my head is cleaning glue lines on joined tops and backs before passing through a thickness sander. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Thanks for all the great info,

Mike

Alan, your stone suggestion was the solution. Wow! I've never been able to get that nice a surface on spruce before. Thank you.

I also find scrapers indispensable. I have about 7, (LN, Veritas, Marples) just rectangular (no Carruth yet).
I am using them at the moment to level Zpoxy (before sanding) for pore filling .
It's making a simple job of removing any ridges/thick areas without risking sand through, which was much more difficult ( read b%$?*y near impossible) with sanding alone.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Double post

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.