The wonder tool

One of the most used tools in my shop is one that costs only a few dollars, but lasts virtually forever, is easy to sharpen and easy to use. It produces a surface that is flawless, out performs sand paper every time, and requires no electricity.

Yup, it’s a card scraper.

It is sharpened to a square edge, and then rolled over to produce a burr. It takes a few minutes to dress a brand new one, and occasionally needs to be redressed to restore a nice edge, but it takes just seconds to repair an edge that is becoming dull.
One thing to watch for is that a card scraper should never produce dust. The shavings should look like (and feel like) the shavings you’d expect out of the finest smoothing plane.



This little card is used as a final touch on boards that are almost ready for finish.
Its final and most impressive attribute is that no matter what type of figured wood it’s used on, it will not tear out the grain.

All this for just a few dollars.