Where to buy a Hand held scraper?

Anyone recommend current vendors for hand held scrapers and replacement blades?

Thanks
Glenn B.

Are there non-handheld scrapers?

Mechanola said:

Are there non-handheld scrapers?

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For fucks sake, your from Switzerland. Have you not heard of Biax, Electro mechanical scrappers.

machtool said:

For fucks sake, your from Switzerland. Have you not heard of Biax, Electro mechanical scrappers.

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I think the point was even those are hand-held.
I love it here but comedy is not necessarily the Swiss' strong point. Better than the Germans though!

Screwmachine said:

Better than the Germans though!

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Your blonde Freundin has a lovely laugh.

To answer the OP's question, Sandvik is a stateside choice. The Sandvik blades are compatible with Biax holders.

Just now learning to play the Swiss card game Jass. In many ways it is similar to the humour.

Dapra, talk to Matt. Hand held and all kinds of blades ect.

They as well are the Biax dealer.

The 1" wide Sanvik is OK, but still a bit stiff compared to a BIAX with a BIAX tipped scraper blade that can be used in the hand and power scrapers. Matt at DAPRA 800-243-3344 can sell you a new one as Cash mentioned they are the USA distributors of the Swiss/German made Scrapers. There are a few making hand scrapers copies and I may start selling some soon.

I know you are looking online at an Anderson as they have been around for years. They are OK, but I don't like them. I used one when I was learning 50 years ago and when someone brings a brand new one, no matter what type they buy, they end up changing it by grinding, welding in and extension, flattening the pipe type or milling it thinner, so save some hassle and buy a Sandvik or Biax. Also you will need to buy or make a diamond wheel blade sharpener. I recommend buying a 260, 600 and 1200 grit wheel. We have talked on here about homemade and store bought machines. Also a blade radius control gage that Matt sells is handy. Rich

Thanks all, Richard, actually I just received an email from DARPA, so will check with them. I saw their tool gauge and will pick one up. Sent an email to you re: any possible upcoming west coast scraping classes...

Re: "hand held scraper", well, I mentioned that to differentiate from the machine scrapers...

One additional question: regarding tool geometry, does the thickness or relief of the cutting edges of the blades matter? I assume factory replacement blades are made to optimal thickness - but so far haven't been able to read a lot about tool geometry, beyond curvature and blade widths.

Thanks again,

Glenn

I believe those 1 x 1 carbide inserts are 1/16 thick. I could mike one, but the mic is in the barn and I'm in the house and it's 10 below. You grind the blades to what you need. I have some with the leading edge or corners ground to .020" thick to reach down in a small dovetail like you see on a small lathe compound. I have one on Ebay that is 1/2 wide with a 20 mm radius tip that works great on the small doves after I grind the corners and they also work great for point spotting when scraping 40 PPI. Read thru this and it should help.
Biax Scraper Literature - 1991

A small input from another Swiss guy.
There are so many of those hand scrapers out there. Sandvik, Hazet, ....
IMHO they are all to short and the radius of the blades/inserts is to large.
I only use the 20mm (0.787") for dovetail scraping with a special blade.
The 25mm (1") I only use when I have to remove a lot of material.
For the other stuff I use my self made scrapers with various blade radii.
And I like this kind of handle. It fits perfectly for my hands.

machtool said:

For fucks sake, your from Switzerland. Have you not heard of Biax, Electro mechanical scrappers.

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Machtool, I have, and it’s scrapers, not scrappers. To scrape is a handcraft, no matter whether you use an electromechanical device or not. Man guides the tool. I only seized an opportunity for making a joke. Life’s ghastly enough. To stress that I’d like to state that I dislike, hate, abhor the introduction of CNC from the bottom of my soul and heart. An electric motor between me and the scraper is already doo-doo to me. Either we are mechanicians, machinists at the least, or we are slaves to a throw-away society. I was born in 1961 and raised to treat everything with care. Scraping stands more or less in the center of our trade, all great machines of the 19th and 20th century have scraped bearing surfaces, the Bell & Howell film perforators among them.

Those perforators made billions of strokes thanks to a completely hand scraped sliding block between a hand scraped path and adjustable wedge. Since I was a projectionist in a former life I also miss everything physical and manual about motion pictures. Yes, it was painful to see cinema die. It was painful when I had to close my lab that I had built up over many years. Manual processing of all kinds of black-and-white films, you know. Even professional photographers came to me when they were having troubles with 120 roll film or sheet film not coming out nicely of development.

To make myself absolutely clear about Switzerland and me: you can still make your career here as a watchmaker but no more as a mechanic. From top to bottom, I mean from the engineer to the untrained worker, mechanics is dead just like cinema. There’s basically no difference between the monitor of a CNC machining center and the display device of today’s movie projectors. It’s all rigid, cold, and devoid of life.

The subject of scraping touches the innermost of my perception of being a mechanic.

GF is looking for a scaper hand at Liechti Engineering in Langnau im Emmental.

Polymechaniker als Schaber/Schleifer (m/w)

Ihre Aufgaben:

Ausmessen von komplexen Teilen

Schaben von Grossteilen mit genauen Führungsauflagen

Schaben von Passflächen bei Abstimmarbeiten

Kontrolle von Hilfsmitteln für die Montage

Rund- und Flachschleifen von Kleinteilen, Einzelteilen und Kleinserien

Unterstützung der Fabrikation Drehen/Fräsen, Montage und Qualitätssicherung

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Seems like a mechanic job to me.

Well, I could understand the possibility of a dilemma in taking that position: in terms of a "purist mechanic" I'd consider collaborationism, since the company produces evil heartless machines and CNC software.
Jokes aside, do you know how does compare in Switzerland the salary of a scraping hand and manual machinist with the salary of a CNC mechanic of equivalent experience and ability? (I know, it's hard to define an "equivalent position" and, if the mentality in this side hasn't changed during the past 15 years, it's taboo talking about salaries even among friends)

Regarding the original topic of this thread, I'd suggest Glenn to buy a scraper like the Dapra or the small Sandwik, use it, study it, and make up something similar with various lengths and thickness of 1018 bar (personally, I prefer not to go over 1/8" thickness).
If think you'll buy a Biax in the future, it is worth thinking about a design that can clamp Biax blades. Otherwise, I'd mills simple clamps to clamp Sandwik scraping blades that you can find fairly cheap on eBay.

Paolo

PS For the scraping class I built three very simple scrapers that consist in a piece of bar stock with a piece of 1/4-20 brazed at one end (to screw on one of those 4" rubber disks that you generally chuck onto an hand-held drill as backing for a sanding disk) and milled a recess on the other. I made a rudimentary clamp mocking the one you find on Sandwik scrapers. Unfortunately, I never took any picture of them and they're at Tuckahoe, right now. If you're interested, I can post a few pictures earlier next year.

Paolo_MD said:

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PS For the scraping class I built three very simple scrapers that consist in a piece of bar stock with a piece of 1/4-20 brazed at one end (to screw on one of those 4" rubber disks that you generally chuck onto an hand-held drill as backing for a sanding disk) and milled a recess on the other. I made a rudimentary clamp mocking the one you find on Sandwik scrapers. Unfortunately, I never took any picture of them and they're at Tuckahoe, right now. If you're interested, I can post a few pictures earlier next year.

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The nice thing about making your own hand scraper is that you won't hesitate to get out your angle grinder to taper it down in thickness until it has the "right" spring action. There is something about not wanting to tear into a commercial scraper. And you can make them up as you go to fit the specific task at hand. McM and others sell convenient carbide blank material if you choose to silver solder the tips as I did. I also like to make heat-applied (to a tang) wood handles that are intentionally not round as they sit in my hand at the same angle every time I pick it up. A million ways to skin the cat....

If you care to see how I put on asymmetric wood handles (on files in this vid, but same process for scrapers) here is a video.

Denis

I make hand scrapers and give them to my apprentices or customers that show an interest in scraping after they see me scrape a gib to fit. I usually make them out of 1" x 3/16" or 3/4" x 3/16" hot roll or cold roll, whatever I have on hand. I make them to fit either the Sandvik scraper blades or the Biax blades. I'm not a machinist but they are easy to make and I prefer them over anything that I have purchased. I have about 5 different designs so far but don't have photos of all of them.

Walt the host of the NC class made several that looked like the Biax/Dapra brand for all to use. He made the clamp reversible so you could use a Sanvik insert or a BIAX blade. Keith Ruker the host of next months class in GA is making some too. He will put it on his You Tube shows. I tell everyone to make a clamp so you can sharpen 8 sides of the blade. if you braze it on, you have 2 blades. I have been using the BIAX/Dapra model with a 20/150 blade for over 30 years. I have found those old Anderson style scrapers are a waste of money. I used that type 50 yrs ago when that's about the only one they had. The flexibility is the key and sharpening them on a diamond lap wheel. Sandik makes a decent one if you lenghten the 1" wide type and when I was in Germany their is a brand over their that looks like a sanvik.

Other Brothers look like mine. I do remember at the Rockford class he had several ..lol....I bring 6 or so Biax styles to the class as many of the guys who bought an Anderson or made a homemade versions say, can I try one of thse after the other students are 1/2 day ahead of them. You know I have been scraping so many years and teaching so many people, I have a pretty good idea on what makes a good hand scraper.

Pic. L to R, Biax Style with # 15 Biax blade, note he is using a magnifier light and bump scraping, a 25/150 Biax blade, Biax with-out pad with 20-150 blade scraping Rulon, Germans scraping Rulon

I made a drawing of the Biax carbide holder with the plan of putting it on a hand scraper or to make another couple blades for the machine. If it's readable, printable, downloadable or otherwise usable you're welcome to it.

What might not be clear unless you've got one yourself to look at, is that the cap is machined to provide a .010 step at the heel to be sure it clamps forward. That will be what the .17" and .18" dimensions are. The whole surface is machined to .18", then it's cut down an additional step except for the "eyebrows" at the back corner. If you're making it you'll certainly do whatever makes most sense to you.

Thanks for the drawing!
One thing not to overlook when making a blade holder is the curvature of the back wall of the pocket holding the carbide blade: it needs to be as small, or smaller, than the radius of the blades you're planning to use: this way the blades will be supported on two points at he edges and not a single point in the middle.

Paolo

jCandlish said:

GF is looking for a scaper hand at Liechti Engineering in Langnau im Emmental.

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I had a job interview there on May, 31st, 2 pm. BIAX, eight hours a day, five days a week, no natural light, nothing to say about anything. Supervisor said that strong wrists were needed. Only flattening parts, no bearing surfaces

Spydy asked about the carbide grade. Here is a page out of their catalog got from Sanvik. I posted this before in another thread. A bit blurry..I think it says H10 Grade._