Tool of the Month November 2016

Welcome to November's Tool of the Month blog post, this month it's a quick look at the Scraper Plane!

The scraper plane is used for final surface flattening and smoothing.

Unlike a normal smoothing plane it's blade is set to scrape the surface rather than cut it. This means that it can tackle timbers which are highly figured without tearing out the grain!

In the above photograph you can see how the blade is set, the blade angle is ground at 45° and a small hook can be added by using a burnisher. A simple card scraper works in a similar way, but these planes are much more controllable and comfortable for larger surfaces such as table tops.

Card scrapers and how to sharpen them will be featured in a future blog post!

I have two scraping planes, one small, open sided version with tilting handles made by Lie Nielsen and another larger plane with an adjustable cutting angle made by Veritas.

Thats all for November, look out for December's Tool of the Month blog post in a few weeks time!