use a cabinet scraper to make tinder and light firesteel

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Bushman5

Joined
Oct 31, 2007
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Take one thin 1" x 2" carbon steel Lee Valley cabinet scraper:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=32672&cat=1,310,41069&ap=1

50k3001s2.jpg


drill a lanyard hole into it, attach cord and do the following:

scrape a pile of shavings from a piece of wood with the scraper, then run the scraper down the firesteel. The thin highly flexible spring steel scraper will "flick" one hell of a shower of sparks onto the shavings.

$5 for three 1" x 2" scrapers, Rc48-52. . They make a pile of tissue thin shavings in no time, much better than a knife in my humble opinion. The shavings are very curly, thin and ignite very fast. These little scrapers also excell at shaving magnesium bars and are extremely excellent strikers for fire steels.

:thumbup: ENJOY!
 
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Very nice!

I've often used a small, thin-bladed knife or a Stanley-knife (box cutter) blade for the same method, but these look perfect!

Now if I could only find them in the UK...
 
Any decent woodworking shop should have scrapers. They are indispensible in my woodworking. They take the place of lots of sheets of sandpaper and are easier on the wood than a plane when the grain gets tricky. You might find them larger than the Lee Valley ones, but they are easy to cut up (I might use a Dremel tool with a cutoff wheel) or you can use an old sawblade. Great tools and a great suggestion Bushman5.
 
hey FoxyRick, if you cant find them in your local or regional woodworking shops in the UK, let me know and i'll mail a set to you.
 
Hey, I didn't know they came that small. Great idea.

A couple of weeks ago I tried putting a mushroom edge like is proper for a cabnet scraper on the back of my 2 inch piece of hacksaw blade I was using to scrap the fire steel. It worked pretty well.

Google "sharpen a cabinet scraper" for video and verbal instructions.
 
Shearwater said:
Hey, I didn't know they came that small. Great idea.

A couple of weeks ago I tried putting a mushroom edge like is proper for a cabnet scraper on the back of my 2 inch piece of hacksaw blade I was using to scrap the fire steel. It worked pretty well.

Google "sharpen a cabinet scraper" for video and verbal instructions.
Click to expand...

here is one link, with a great pic of the little curly shavings

http://woodgears.ca/scraper/index.html

scraper_shavings.jpg
 
Bushman5 said:
hey FoxyRick, if you cant find them in your local or regional woodworking shops in the UK, let me know and i'll mail a set to you.
Click to expand...

Thank you, that's really kind of you to offer.

I've finally found some larger ones though; twice the price per sq. inch but this is rip-off Britain! I can cut them down with a dremmel or shears I imagine.

They don't seem quite as common here - there's another version that uses a holder and very narrow scraper blades and almost everywhere sells them instead.

I'll order a couple and have a go. I've read up on sharpening them. Should be a good alternative to a bit of broken hacksaw, or blunting my knives! I've done it before with my Fallkniven though (there's a video of it on here somewhere) and it took just the hair-popping ability off; down to just shaving sharp. A quick strop brought it back.

Thanks,
Rick.
 
Looks like it works well.

Personally I'd opt to square up the spine of my knife and have 2 less thing to carry, but as far as a dedicated tool goes looks like that would be hard to top.
 
sketchbag said:
Looks like it works well.

Personally I'd opt to square up the spine of my knife and have 2 less thing to carry, but as far as a dedicated tool goes looks like that would be hard to top.
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Not sure it would work that well (the knife that is), might be wrong though. The spine of my A1 is well squared. Strikes great sparks but doesn't scrape curls.

Sharpening the scrapers means making a deliberate burr along the edge with a burnisher - that is what cuts the curls. Knife steel might not take this burr so easily, and I probably wouldn't want to do it anyway.

The slim bit of steel is barely bigger than a hacksaw-blade ferro striker, so it seems a good replacement.
 
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