How to Sharpen a Card Scraper

I'm working on a card scraper here and that's what I want to talk to you about today is sharpening a card scraper. I'm wearing a little GoPro so that you can see just what I'm gonna see and get the details on how to get this completely sharp. Now for full step-by-step, how-to, way more in depth, you can have a look at the woodworking class that covers sharpening a card scraper on the Woodworkers Guild of America website. But here's the overview of it. The card scraper has got the square edges. Two faces, one edge here that come up to make these square corners. One of the things that happens over time as you're using and burnishing the scraper is this edge is no longer straight from end to end. So after six or eight burnishings we need to come back and joint that edge. And that's what I'm doing with this file. I'm running it down the length of the card scraper so that I know that it's nice and flat. Now, once I know that it's straight from end to end the next thing I want to do is eliminate these sharp corners 'cause that's a great way to catch your finger on there if you don't. So I'm just gonna give that a pass or two. Now if the file that you're using is real coarse you're gonna need to go one more step which will be to run that edge back and forth over a whetstone to get it nice and smooth. In this case my file is a real fine tooth file so I'm ready to go right to my burnisher. When I burnish this, I'm gonna do that with a tool that is slightly harder than the card scraper itself. So when I press down on this I can basically deform this edge by doing so. The first thing I want to do is to form the edge this way. So I'm gonna do that by holding the card scraper flat on the table and running it over. I'll show you that in just a sec. I'm gonna put a drop of oil on the scraper and it just helps lubricate the process. Then if this is zero degrees, I'm gonna hold that burnisher down about five degrees or so, we don't wanna get real excessive there. What this process will do is take that currently square corner and to form it down this way a little bit. Now I'm from this side, I'm just going to flip it and do this side. There's enough oil left on the burnisher, I don't have to oil this side. Now to turn that ship back, that burrback this way we can do this a couple of ways. One would be again, if this is zero or 90 degrees I'm gonna bring this back about five degrees. Once again, we don't want this to get excessive. I can feel a burr form in there. It's kind of small. So what I'm gonna do is come back this way and deform it all again. That's much better. As an alternative method you can also go into a vice. Now that burr being formed, let's have a look at what we've got here. Sounds good, feels good. Look at the nice curly shavings that we're getting. And that's the key to this, that's what we want. When we have dust instead of shavings then your scraper is dull and this all needs to be done again. So it's a process that's definitely worth mastering. Like I said, step-by-step from jointing the edge to the whetstone, to the burnisher, lots more information including how to correctly hold the scraper so you get nice cuts out of it. All of that information is available as a woodworking class on the Woodworkers Guild of America website. So check that out and you'll be scraping tissue paper thin shavings in no time.