SCRAPING OR SANDING

[Brawdhead]

Today, I would use a very highly polished piece of stainless steel for boning. But, you can use the shank on a screwdriver, or even real bone.

Or just use the same burnisher you used to turn the hook on the edge of your scraper. (Er, provided that you do use a polished burnisher for dressing your scrapers.)

I've also used polished agate for burnishing wood.

I've not built full firearms yet, but I have reshaped and refinished stocks. I use cabinet scrapers a great deal. It's a habit I picked up from tillering and finishing longbows.

I try to avoid sand paper (especially in the final steps of shaping and surfacing) because, to my eyes, little ruins the appearance of a well-worked piece of wood quite like having sanding dust packed into the pores. Once it's in there, it's there to stay...vacuum, compressed air, and tack cloth won't clear it.

Scraping won't clog the pores because it doesn't create dust. The pores remain open and I don't have a lot of stray dust floating around the shop to spoil wet finishes.

I rely then on my finish to fill the pores (it takes a lot of steps, but eventually the surface levels). Only after I've applied and dried enough coats to fully seal the wood and normalize the surface do I start in with the steel wool and ten-billion-grit sandpaper between coats.

Dan in da U.P.

 

[Brawdhead]

You'll only get a washboard if you scrape with your scraper the same angle as the curl.

But curl doesn't have a single angle; that's why it's curl. You have very minute but localized sudden changes in fiber angle and density. You'll catch variations regardless of what angle you approach them at.

And anytime you go off-angle, you run the risk of ripping out fibers instead of just shaving through them.

I admit that I haven't found a satisfying way to deal with figured wood. It's mostly experimentation. If your scraper catches too much going one way, try the other direction (like go top to bottom instead of bottom to top), even if the appearance of the grain suggests otherwise.

Sometimes for hard spots, I keep a separate scraper on hand with a very shallow burr. When a ripple develops in the wood with my regular scraper, I try to level it with the shallow scraper by making a great number of short but careful strokes at the trouble spot.

I've also thought about having a rough-edged scraper to score the dense parts so that my shaping scraper won't meet so much resistence at those points. Haven't tried it yet; it's just an idea.

Usually when I see washboarding, the gun is pretty well worn.

Indeed, figured wood can developed a washboard appearance on its own over time, even if the stock was perfectly level when it was first built. The waves of different densities and grain ends on figured lumber can cause it to shrink and wear unevenly, creating a rippled surface.

The same characteristics that resist the bite of the scraper also resist contraction from drying and erosion from handling. So it's easy to see how the cause of washboarding on an antique might be misidentified.

Dan in da U.P.

 

[flintriflesmith]

I did a web search and Sandpaper was patented by Isaac Fischer Jr, Springfield, Vermont on June 14, 1834. I would guess like powder horns scraping was used on older firearms.

That patent must have been on some specific type of sandpaper or manufacturing method. Sandpaoper was being sold in stores in Colonial America at least as early as Dec. 11, 1755 (PA Gazette).

I looked around a bit more and find that sandpaper was also advertised in the Boston Gazette around 1762-5. The oldest surviving example of sandpaper I have heard of is an unused bundle in James Watt’s shop in England and he died in 1819. I’ve not seen it myself but am told it looks like modern sandpaper except the sheets have the irregular edges characteristic of hand laid paper.

Abrasive paper (both sand and glass) was apparently know by the mid-eighteenth century but rarely ever used. The problem seems to have been the expense. It is mentioned in the context of military armorers supplies but hardly ever in store or gunsmth inventories. Shark skins were used and the cabinet shop at Colonial Williamsburg has done some experimenting with them. As I recall the small sharks caught today in the Bay have skin with not much abrasive power. May need a Pacific Ocean shark!

There are lots of accounts of lose abrasives on pads or brushes. Emery powder, rotten stone and even brick dust were used. Powdered abrasives were separated by different grits by stirring them in water then drawing off the water in layers by opening taps placed at different heights on the barrel. The finer grit would be near the top.

There was also a lot more scraping and burnishing on both wood and metal.

Gary

 

[paulvallandigham]

If you want to imitate the old way of polishing, use a tack rag, or any other kind of rag, dip it in mineral oil, and then into the dried powdered medium of grit you want to use. The oil makes the powder stick to the rag, and also helps to all the grit to float on the surface, removing only the high spots. Various types of emery stone grits, rottenstone, and grits derived from sifting sand, or brick dust, were used by furniture makers, and instrument makers all the way back to Egytian history. The cost of gluing grit to cloth or paper would have been the problem to solve to make sandpaper available. Not until the use of new techniques to make paper from wood pulp became common, and inexpensive, could anyone afford to try to made a sand paper. As with all tools made to do fine work, old master craftsmen learned to do it the " old ways", and would be the last to adopt a new tool to use. Who wants to relearn how to do something using a different tool when the way you have been doing it for years, and now do it very well, works for you?

 

[CrackStock]

Steel, antler or bone all make good burnishers.

Some people claim that some of the bone or antler are rubbed into the stock and offer some advntage, but I see no evidence of this and have found that a steel rod with a bit of boiled linseed oil will do a good job of burnishing.

CS