Scraping in a straight edge

Richard King 2 said:
Some folks slide a coolant hose up the handle or wrap it with rubberized electrical tape or wear leather gloves. I have also had students drill and tap holes in the steel handle so they can put a vertical handle on the scraper handle. Use a round rubber bike steering handle.. Once you put a rubber sanding pad on the wood end and push with your body and not your hands and arms you will feel better. Learrning to scrape especially when the blade is dull or lapped wrong it makes hand scraping a real "pain".
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Richard,
Your video shows the method you use to hand scrape. It's poetry in motion.
Do you have the video available to the forum? in the database?
I know it's copyrighted material so I hope I'm not stepping out of place here.
Lots to learn in the video.
 
I still sell them on eBay, so no I don't show it online for free. There are plenty of my students who have made you tube shows. Search "Richard King Scraping" to see many of them. One student who isn't on the list is Jan Sverre Haugjord, He has attended 6 classes over the years. Here in USA and in Europe. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD1jVjhwma9Ehj8BQqDMPHw
 
For me finding a comfortable position that felt natural was a real pain. I like to push the scraper against my lower body so I need a really low table or stand on a bench. I'd like to get a hydraulic table so I can change height easily. One thing I did notice is once I developed some hand, eye, muscle coordination in that comfortable spot I got better in the spot where it didn't feel natural. For example sometimes I'll butt the scraper on my bicep and use more of my arms and upper body if I need to. Also Rich had me put an ink mark on my blade right in the middle. That was a great tip to help you hit your spot you're aiming for.
Length of your scraper and flex are two other things you will develop a preference for over time.
Some sort of a handle on the lower end of the scraper would work really well I think. Might have to try that this winter.
 
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Ordered another brayer as I broke mine. Getting the right thickness of dykem high spot blue takes some rolling. Appears canode blue isn't available in the US. I used a 12"x12" piece of granite tile as a sandpaper backing to flatten out my stone. Got one face rough scraped, working on rough scraping the other. When I get them both roughed to a few PPI, I'll start on my finer scraping technique. I spend maybe a half hour a day or so working on this, not much, but what I can handle without too much of a challenge. Definitely a situation where old eyes do well with lots of light.
 
Instead of the brayer have you tried a lint free very dry rag balled up and wrapped with a lint free very dry wrapper and tied very tight with a string?
This applicator seems to work well for me.
Be sure to always put you applicator in a clean jar and put the lid on every time you put it back every thing is an enemy to an even application. Also, be careful not to contaminate your blue. I've not had any luck with canode. Perhaps User Error, but it was seemed alot more like latex paint.
I can capture a photo of the ball type applicator if you'd like.

Daryl
MN
 
I admire what you guys are doing here, and I really wish I wanted to do this too…but no.
 
Also, consider experimenting with different thicknesses of blue.
They will tell you different things.
Consider a very light coating of blue on your datum. Then use a sharpe to circle the high spots and maybe a dot on the shiny very high spots. Then come through with a slightly thicker coat thicker coat. If you have a lot to take off then you can do a version of step scraping. First the shinys, then the circled area, then all the heavy blue.
Willingness to experiment is a huge skill. But, yes this is a huge amount of work....

Daryl
MN
 
Uglydog said:
Also, consider experimenting with different thicknesses of blue. ...
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Good advice.

What works best for me so far has been to use a bit of mineral spirits to thin the dykem hi spot. Put a very small dot of dykem on my surface plate and then just barely get the tip of an acid brush wet in mineral spirits and use that to do an initial distribution of the dykem, and then spread it with the roller until any wet spots are gone and it is uniformly distributed on the working area of the plate. Otherwise it is too thick or uneven to give a meaningful marking.

A sharpy is a necessary tool. I like to use green to contrast with the dykem, as it is a bit harder to wipe off then the dykem.
 
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