FILENAMES: scraper1.jpg scraper2.jpg scraper3.jpg scraper4.jpg DESCRIPTION: These are pictures of machine tool scrapers made by Terry Nelson . Terry provided the following description: ========================================================================= scraper.txt Here are some carbide tip scrapers I made. scraper1.jpg This is a view of the tips of the three scrapers. The top one has a 3/4 inch insert, the middle a 1/2, and the bottom a 3/8. The design is quite simple. A notch for the insert, a slit, and a lockdown screw. I also put a hole at the end of the slit to ease the lockdown. The 3/4 and 1/2 inserts have 3/4 and 1/2 inch shafts. The 3/8 is a scant 7/16 with a taper at the end. These were chosen mainly because it's the stock I had on hand. Any steel stock should work fine to make these. The 3/8 holder is cold roll. I don't know what the other two are. You can cut the notch with a slitting saw, endmill, shaper, hacksaw, or jewlers saw. The latter two will require a little file work of course. I did the larger ones on a Bridgeport with a slitting saw, and the smaller one with my shaper. scraper2.jpg Slightly different view of the tips. The non symetrical tip on the middle one is, a, well, uh, goober. Works great though. scraper3.jpg Top view of the tips. The middle one really does have an insert, it just got blasted away by the camera flash. scraper4.jpg full view of scrapers Full view of the scapers with the handles. The handles are just PVC rod. The scraper shafts are pressed in with a "hand press fit". This allows you to pull them out and use them without the handle. This comes in handy sometimes when you get down to detail stuff. For those of you not using plastics it's time you started. The PVC rod can be found at any decent plastics shop and it's quite cheap. It cuts like butter and you can glue it. Check the yellow pages for a plastics shop in your area. You'll also find other great plastics like Delrin, and HDMW. Using them. The carbide lasts MUCH longer than any steel scraper could ever hope to. This make scrapping much easier since you aren't constantly dressing the scraper tip. To dress them, simply pull the insert, place the edge square on a fine diamond lap and rub away. You also can just rotate them and sharpen them later if you like. It only takes a few seconds to sharpen them though. I do recommend slightly dulling the corners to keep them from gouging in if you twist them. These are different than the regular scrapers in that there is no radius on the ends. You can radius them if you like, but I've found the square tip is quite nice. First of all, with a rounded tip you only cut in the center anyway. A 1.25 inch wide scraper may only cut in the center 1/2 inch unless you're really pressing on it. So just move down to the 1/2 inch scraper. Works for me anyway. I'll confess I'm not an experienced scraper, but I have successfully scraped in a shaper taking it from unusable (not square, or flat) to a handy little machine. I roll on the spotting compound with a small "paint sytle" roller. The roller I used was made from aluminum, which is less than optimal. I currently have a hard small cell foam rubber wheel I'm building a roller out of. I hope it will work better. The spotting compound is quite slippery so you must have good bearing on the roller or it will slide. The roller makes it easy to apply the spotting compound evenly. Terry tmnelson@micron.net