Shaving wood off with broke glass...

[rootnuke]

Yes I am a city-boy, but I did spend long summers in East Texas as a young boy. During one of those summers with my grandfather I remember setting in the back porch trying to get a walking stick wittled to a certain shape. It seemed the knife I was using was cutting too much and the sand paper was taking too long.
My grand father saw my problem and broke an old fruit jar, wrapped one end of the one of the glass pieces in a napkin and said try this...

Well much to my surprise I could shave the wood with the natural sharp edge of the glass. It was great.

Some may say that if you draw a chisel back you can shave wood. But I find broke glass better and you never have to worry about sharpening. Just break another bottle. I use glass to work down my stock to this day.

Does anyone else use glass like this?

BTW: The stick is ~30 years old, and I still have the walking stick leaning in the corner of my garage. Its a great reminder of a simple time with a boy and his grandfather on the back porch.

 

[bob1961]

yup and even used those scrapers made for it also that come in different shapes..........................bob

 

[Stumpkiller]

I use broken shards of plate glass for scraping powder horns. For wood I use my ancient Disston cabinet scraper and keep the edge burr with the file and burnisher method.

 

[Gary]

Your pop learned it from old timers. I learned it from books.

 

There is a story in one of the many Boone biographies from a visitor who met Dan Boone in his old age at his son's house in Missouri...Boone was sitting on the stoop shaving a powder horn with a piece of glass! This would have been in the early 1800s. Of course our Native Americans used flint in the same way from ancient times.

 

[Deadeye]

Back in the olden days when they made reusable pop bottles,
which were very thick, that was the bottle of choice for making scrapers. I've scraped a lot of wood with them but now use a planer blade for most of my scraping.