Homemade Cabinet Scraper

Well folks I’ll have to admit at being kind of clumsy at times. I dropped my Stanley #80 cabinet scraper on the floor and broke it. I used it a lot.

So it was an opportune time to try making a scraper, like I had considered doing before. I tried making one printed in a Fine Woodworking planes and scraper book.

The first one was a flop. It chattered and didn’t do so well. It had the blade at an 85 degree angle. I tried resharpening the blade and such but it didn’t work so well, so I tried another scraper in the same book.

After completion I tried it and it worked very well. It has a 65 degree blade angle. Since it worked so well I decided to put on a long wearing sole. I had some brass sheet that I put on it with modified brass nails. You can see where I was overzealous in driving the brads in but it’s OK. I believe I’ll put in a screw in the back to arch the blade some for more aggressive cuts.

A reason I like it so well is that the sole is large and it really helps in keeping the scraped area flat. Sure does work well

Now that I consider the time and materials I think I have maybe $80.00 invested in it and I can buy a new #80 for about $55.00 or close so maybe it wasn’t worth it. Nah! It was worth it!!!

Next will be a special scraper for cleaning up a cove I use a lot on Grandfather clock mouldings and for a crown moulding I use often.

Charles Mullins

-- God makes the wood beautiful--I simply rearrange it to make it more useful, hopefully.