Spring Break in Iowa

Handworks

Just announced Handworks for 2015. I have heard nothing but great stuff from this show so mark your calenders. I have been invited to demo in the green woodworking barn. I'll post more on this later.

Scorp Rehab

I travel on occasion to teach at other locations and recently I noticed my Barr scorp has a nasty ding in the blade. Most likely from throwing it in the tool bag in a hurry to see the wife and kid back home. So I decided to tune up the scorp. First I changed the geometry of the handles. Mine sit at 4 degrees to the back of the blade. My Ray Larsen scorp sits at 16 degrees which I love. So I pulled the handles, heated and bent the Barr scorp to 12 degrees.

 If you have an oscillating spindle sander then try this simple method to grind the inside and outside of the blade. I made a tilting guide from plywood and a hinge to match the bevel angle of the scorp.

 Moving the walnut piece back and forth gives me what I want. Then I simply grind the defects away. The sander actually polishes the bevel very nice.

 It works the same on the front bevel after adjusting the angle.

 As you can see the surface comes out very nice. The nick in the blade is all gone.

 It works up a nice burr on the edge.

 I tried to hone the edge by removing the sanding sleeve and using diamond paste but the rubber sleeve is too soft. I may experiment with a hard maple sleeve in the future.

 The Drawsharp from Peter Galbert actually works really nice only on the outside edge to break off the burr. My scorp is now better than ever.

 Lately Logan has been chopping firewood for next year. I ran out this year and don't want this to happen next winter. Uncle Jerry from Kentucky used the log splitter which gave Logan a good run.

Although the log splitter won, Logan still had fun and got all kinds of great exercise.