# Kieth Rucker's 9" straight edge just arrived



## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

Has anyone finished one of these yet?
I'm looking forward to working on this. 
I need to finish the carbide lapping machine before I can scrape it.
I do have the mill and the surface grinder.


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## Alexander McGilton (Mar 30, 2020)

I have the 12 inch dovetail straight edge from coreprint in the link below. Functions really well, minute amount of flex under its own weight and handling.
For a low speed lapping machine I just made a tool rest in the lathe tool post and run the lap in the spindle at a low speed.






						45° Dovetail Straight Edge – Coreprint Castings
					






					coreprintcastings.com


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## ErichKeane (Mar 30, 2020)

I bought one of those too!  Its on my todo-list as a way to learn scraping, but I haven't got around to it yet.  Once I get a few projects off my list I can get to it.  

I figure I can knock out the machining/grinding bits in an afternoon, but I'm not sure how long it'll take to do the scraping in!  I figure thats about 99% of the effort.


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## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

ErichKeane said:


> I bought one of those too! Its on my todo-list as a way to learn scraping, but I haven't got around to it yet. Once I get a few projects off my list I can get to it.


I bought it to help maintain the skills I learned in Richard King's class. Plus, it would be a handy tool around the shop.
Thankfully, I have access to friends with excellent scraping skills.


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## ErichKeane (Mar 30, 2020)

Janderso said:


> I bought it to help maintain the skills I learned in Richard King's class. Plus, it would be a handy tool around the shop.
> Thankfully, I have access to friends with excellent scraping skills.


Thats really fortunate!  I haven't had a chance to go to one of Richard's classes, so I'm going to try to use this to self-teach as best I can off the videos of some of his students.  I'm not terribly sure how useful it would be around the shop, but I'm going to give it a chance anyway!  As soon as my  projects list gets shorter


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## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

Erich,
I can appreciate wanting to learn scraping. There are specific techniques and skills to learn where and how much to take off.
You can chase your tail for days. 
From one that has seen a very small amount of how this art form is accomplished, I strongly encourage you to find someone in your area that has had some form of training.
Just my opinion.


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## ErichKeane (Mar 30, 2020)

Janderso said:


> Erich,
> I can appreciate wanting to learn scraping. There are specific techniques and skills to learn where and how much to take off.
> You can chase your tail for days.
> From one that has seen a very small amount of how this art form is accomplished, I strongly encourage you to find someone in your area that has had some form of training.
> Just my opinion.


Perhaps some day... I watched through Keith Rucker and Adam Booth's videos, so I'm hoping that is sufficient to get some initial ideas figuring it out.  And at the moment, worst case is I waste time some time on a cheap disposable camel-back.  

I've not heard of any scraping people out in the Portland area (let alone deep in the 'burbs where I am  ), but I'll keep an ear out.


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## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

For those of you that care, here's Kieth's video on milling the straight edge.


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## Cooter Brown (Mar 30, 2020)

That's awesome! A guy in the Richard King scraping class at my shop had one of those and scraped it within 40-50 PPI.


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## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

I just watched this video again.
Now I'm trying to figure out where to start. I don't have a big old horizontal milling machine to chew up the face in one pass. I'm going to need to mill the top and bottom so I can grind it.
I'm thinking I will use a face mill while mounting the frame as close to 90 degrees as I can and mill the face first then flip it and do the top.
The 45 is pretty straight forward.
Surface grinding will make scraping a heck of a lot easier, less material to remove.


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## ErichKeane (Mar 30, 2020)

Janderso said:


> I just watched this video again.
> Now I'm trying to figure out where to start. I don't have a big old horizontal milling machine to chew up the face in one pass. I'm going to need to mill the top and bottom so I can grind it.
> I'm thinking I will use a face mill while mounting the frame as close to 90 degrees as I can and mill the face first then flip it and do the top.
> The 45 is pretty straight forward.
> Surface grinding will make scraping a heck of a lot easier, less material to remove.



I was thinking about just putting it in my vise 'top down' and mill the bottom with a face-mill that way.  It seemed to me that the horizontal he used made it more difficult than a vertical mill, rather than easier.  Basically do the first indexing off the 'web' section, then work from there.  

You could also probably get the 3 90 degree faces with the vertical mill in the same setup.  From there, it seems like it would be easy enough to index off of those from there.


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## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

ErichKeane said:


> I was thinking about just putting it in my vise 'top down' and mill the bottom with a face-mill that way.  It seemed to me that the horizontal he used made it more difficult than a vertical mill, rather than easier.  Basically do the first indexing off the 'web' section, then work from there.
> 
> You could also probably get the 3 90 degree faces with the vertical mill in the same setup.  From there, it seems like it would be easy enough to index off of those from there.


We will see how it indexes. Hopefully I'll have enough confidence in the consistency it will be a valid set-up method.


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## eeler1 (Mar 30, 2020)

Just got mine too.  No rush to get it finished, now that scraping class here in NorCal has been postponed.  So I'll sit back and just copy what you do, Jeff.

Seems to me that the initial clean up of the flat establishes the reference plane for what comes after.  So even if not perfect it won't matter since the 45* surface is referenced from it.  If that makes sense.  Of course you want to get it so there's no taper end-to-end, nor tilt from side-to-side, but even if there is, it's not a tool-ruining problem.  I choose to believe this because it gives me courage.


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## Janderso (Mar 30, 2020)

eeler1 said:


> Just got mine too.  No rush to get it finished, now that scraping class here in NorCal has been postponed.  So I'll sit back and just copy what you do, Jeff.
> 
> Seems to me that the initial clean up of the flat establishes the reference plane for what comes after.  So even if not perfect it won't matter since the 45* surface is referenced from it.  If that makes sense.  Of course you want to get it so there's no taper end-to-end, nor tilt from side-to-side, but even if there is, it's not a tool-ruining problem.  I choose to believe this because it gives me courage.


Well said, exactly!
Where we start, determines where we end up.
I'm thinking i'll wait for you to show me the way.


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## Bob Korves (Mar 30, 2020)

Janderso said:


> I'm going to need to mill the top and bottom so I can grind it.


When scraping steel after grinding, there can be issues with the surface ground metal being harder (or maybe tougher, or both) than the underlying metal, which can cause the scraper to skate with no cutting, followed by using more pressure and then digging in deeper than desired.  Very frustrating.  With using cast iron I "suspect" that trouble might be reduced or no problem at all.  Look for it whenever you scrape surface ground metal.


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## NCjeeper (Mar 30, 2020)

Got mine about a month ago. Cant do anything with it until I get my shop up and running.


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## Janderso (Mar 31, 2020)

Bob Korves said:


> When scraping steel after grinding, there can be issues with the surface ground metal being harder (or maybe tougher, or both) than the underlying metal, which can cause the scraper to skate with no cutting


Bob,
If heat is not an issue due to coolant used while grinding, is there some other voo-doo going on to affect the surface?


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## Bob Korves (Mar 31, 2020)

Janderso said:


> Bob,
> If heat is not an issue due to coolant used while grinding, is there some other voo-doo going on to affect the surface?


Work hardening.


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## Janderso (Mar 31, 2020)

Ah ha.








						Work hardening - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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