Re-purposed "tool" makes great detail scraper

[Chuck Tweedy]

Mostly from the kids, we have tons of little odds-and-ends that fill drawers around the house. You know, old Happy-Meal toys and the like.
Well I found a real Gem among the clutter the other day. It is a tool used for "Heely" shoes - that frightening footwear with concealed wheels that allows one to glide along like an interviewed vampire.
Anyhow, I ground and sanded the end to a nice clean, sharp square. It is now a detail scraper, which, due to the offset handle, allows fantastic control.
I've always struggled with scraping finish cleanly to a line for FB overhangs and bridges. I just used it today for a FB overhang, and WOW it is easy to control. And aggressive to!
If anyone else has one of these things, it is worth re-purposing it.
Or making an equivalent tool from scratch.

[Jason Rodgers]

A) What sort of terrible parent allows their child to wear shoes that are a fractured coccyx time bomb?

B) How does one use the patent-pending Tweedy Scraper? Is it held vertically and pulled, or held horizontally to the surface?

[Chuck Tweedy]

A) Us

B) You push it - horizontal to the surface. It's basically a cranked-neck chisel with a very blunt end ... blunt but sharp so it can scrape.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Chuck,
That looks like a handy tool. You will probably find a lot of other uses for it as well.

[Randy Roberts]

Jason,
Don't pick on Chuck's parenting.

As our pediatrician once told me..."These kids can take a lot of head trauma.." Just before I pointed out a fracture running 1/2 around the skull on our son's radiograph.

[Chuck Tweedy]

And Randy's kid turned out just fine!
This thing is great for scraping off CA drop fills to!

[Patrick Hanna]

Nice idea, Chuck. I'm glad I clicked in. Thanks for posting this.

[Alan Carruth]

We used to compete to see who could go furthest down a steep cobbled hill on metal wheeled roller skates before they wiped out. The 'winner' was further down the hill, going faster,and thus got the bigger bruises and skinned areas. It's nice to know that modern kids are no smarter than we were...

[Chuck Tweedy]

Glad I could point this out for you Patrick.
I appreciate your honest and positive assessment of the information in my post. As opposed to ... well, its pretty obvious isn't it?

[Jason Rodgers]

"Awesome." (Where's the ducking and running emoticon? Eh, this one will do )

[Jason Rodgers]

It's basically a cranked-neck chisel with a very blunt end ... blunt but sharp so it can scrape.

I remember that I have such a chisel, bought years ago thinking it would be good for carving scallops in braces. I don't use it. How would one go about modifying the business end to scrape? Is it just a 90deg grind, as simple as you describe? Did you burnish it? Can you post a closeup shot of the end?

[Chuck Tweedy]

Okay, I see we're back to business - good

It is pretty much just a 90 degree blunted end with a very clean, square, sharp edge. I do remember our esteemed Mr. Mario explaining this type of tool, that's where I knew to grind it to the blunt square end.

Focus is not great, but this is the business end from below the corner.

And the "profile" of the blunt end - Just square

[Michael Lewis]

Jason, your chisel might be a 'glue chisel' for removing glue squeeze out. Does it have a slight bevel to the face?

[Jason Rodgers]

Thanks for the pics, Chuck. That looks very easy to control the depth of scrape.

Correction: the chisel I described is a Pfiel dog leg chisel. It can, in fact, work as a glue chisel, but with the flared head, I've found it's too easy to dig under the brace when attempting a glue cleanup. Grinding the blade blunt would make it useful as a scraper, and also probably more useful as a glue chisel, since the blade bevel wouldn't want to dive under the brace.

[Patrick Hanna]

I remember reading a piece by Richard Schneider many years ago. He had fashioned a curved chisel from a piece of automotive leaf spring, which he ground to a very blunt face. He called it his "glue-clearing" chisel. Pretty much the same principle as Chuck's blunt faced scraper here. Richard's chisel was much longer than Chuck's scraper, but the business end looked very similar. I believe once a person got used to actually using a tool like this, the utility of the thing would prove itself in many, many situations. I repeat: It's a very cool idea. I'm going to keep an eye out for some steel I can fashion into such a thing!

[Pat Foster]

We used to compete to see who could go furthest down a steep cobbled hill on metal wheeled roller skates before they wiped out. The 'winner' was further down the hill, going faster,and thus got the bigger bruises and skinned areas. It's nice to know that modern kids are no smarter than we were...

The kids are no smarter, but parents are more paranoid.



I've recently discovered the wonders of scrapers. Used them for quite a while, but never played around with the edges, except for the usual dress with a burr. Now I'm using them without a burr in some instances, so they work flat like Chuck's. Much more versatile that way. Alan, is your scraper used without a burr?

Pat

[Jason Rodgers]

Ground off the tip of the bevel on my dog leg chisel, and it does indeed work well for scraping. It's very easy to change the angle of attack for more or less aggressive scraping. I only needed to take a small amount off the tip to get the necessary blunt end, then clean up the burrs on my granite tile with various grits of sandpaper that I use for chisel sharpening. This will make this tool much more useful. The leg of the dog is so square, and the tip is so short, that the bevel can't actually be sharpened in the typical fashion: the crook is in the way.

[Chuck Tweedy]

I did a quick Google search to see what the chisel of your looks like Jason, and it is a strange beastie. The short cutting end is obviously designed to get into small spaces.
Anyhow, it will be great steel being that it is pfeil (poetry intended)

The one thing that would concern me is that there is a long leg of steel between handle and the dog-leg. I would be afraid that it might act as a spring and induce some chatter of the cutter. Don't know - let us know.

[Jason Rodgers]

Yeah, it's the Pfiel 21/12 dog leg chisel. I think they are typically used for cleaning the bottoms of mortices. I bought it thinking it'd be great for getting down into those scallop troughs, but then I tried to sharpen it: "Wait a sec... what the... aw $#!+..." This was before I understood chisel technique for shaving braces and carving scallops. Now I know better and use a 1/2" chisel, bevel down.

The way I tried using this thing for scraping was to hold the, uh, dog's foot flat against the surface with my left index finger as I push it with my right hand. By tipping the handle up, I can adjust the cut from just grazing the surface to aggressively scoring. It takes a lot of movement at the handle end to affect the cutting edge, so it's pretty easy to control and sneak up on the depth of cut you want. I need to dress the vertical, blunt face a little more to make that 90deg intersection nice and sharp, but it gives new purpose to this chisel (especially since it has virtually sat untouched for a decade).

[David King]

This looks like a miniature version of a way scraper used for scraping the mating surfaces of dovetailed ways on cast iron machinery of the last three centuries. There's also a powered version called a Biax (which could remove a LOT of glue in a hurry). Ways were typically scraped to within .0001 of flatness and parallel, all by hand. It's becoming a lost art in this part of the world but the concept has been proven.