The first choice of professionals around the world is the Anderson Model 5 Tube Type Scraper. With the ability to use both High Speed Steel and Carbide tipped blades and a large easy to fit wooden handle, these tools are versatile, durable, and comfortable.

This scraper can be used with High Speed Steel (HSS) blades when economy and easy sharpening are important, or it can use carbide tipped blades that hold an edge 4 to 10 times longer than HSS.

This tool comes in three different lengths so that one can be chosen to fit your stature and scraping style.

For tips on choosing the right size and picking the right blade material check here.

Without a quality bearing reference the best anyone can hope for in scraping is a pretty finish. The worst they can expect is a surface that is less accurate than it was before it was scraped.

These straight edges were designed by scraper hands for scraper hands to be the best available. Many years of scraping experience is applied to these tools so that they are the most versatile and easy to use tools of their kind. Made of the highest quality class 30 gray cast iron, these tools are easy to maintain, durable, and stable. How are they cast?

The castings for these tools are ordered and cast in small lots with all parts 100% tested for quality control.

This is an improved version of the most popular straight edge that was used in my shop.

This tool is extremely versatile because of it's size and design. The design allows the marking of flat and dovetail surfaces.

With a flat marking area of 25"X3" it is sized to be useful for mill saddles, knees, and smaller columns as well as larger lathe cross slides and carriages and the ways of smaller surface grinders.

Because of this tools size and versatility this is the first straight edge most shops should buy.

Straight edges are available from machinerepair.com as stress relieved castings only.

This is the least expensive way to purchase the straight edge. To be a useful tool it must be machined and then stress relieved again. The master surfaces are then scraped to the quality of bearing desired. This can be a lot of work but it makes a great project and the quality of the resulting tool is only limited by your skill and patience.

Files as Scrapers
It is sometimes said that the easiest way to make a scraper is to grind the proper blade shape onto the end of an old file. There are a great many problems that come from building a scraper in this way.
Files are normally only case-hardened. This gives them the flexibility needed to be used without breaking as a would be the case with a through-hardened piece. The case-hardened depth usually goes only a bit deeper than the teeth of the file. These teeth must be removed from the end of the file or a smooth scraped finish is unobtainable when scraping with this type of tool. After these teeth are removed, the remaining material is usually not suitable for holding an edge. Having to continually sharpen a scraper will turn a simple job into a major chore.

Files large enough to grasp as a scraper are thicker than scraper blades. This extra thickness can cause scraping the inside of dovetails to be extremely difficult and in some cases impossible.
A truly effective tool is one that is made for the job it will perform. Because of the fine quality work scrapers are used for, this is true of the hand scraper more than most other tools. After all, it is possible to disassemble the engine in your car with little more than a hammer, a screwdriver, and a pair of vise grips, but would you want to?

© 2009 machinerepair.com / Michael Morgan

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