Holy cow, that's a lot of replies! Thanks boys, one and all!!!
![:beer:](https://madmodder.net/Smileys/default/anim_32.gif)
I don't have scrapers elbow, but I do have the scraper's blues
Angle grinder
![Doh :Doh:](https://madmodder.net/Smileys/default/Doh.gif)
why didn't I think of that!!!!! (although, I do have to say that Bodger John's shaft finisher was pretty impressive.....)
Bertie, the time just flies when yer having fun! Some people go to the gym, I just lift a small lathe ways back and forth from the plate to the bench, and the bench to the plate, scraping a microscopic amount of metal off each time. A couple days of that, and shoveling snow seems like a nice break!
Norman, thanks buddy. I hope it does add something pleasant to read. Though it might get laughable yet because I haven't made the big screw up that is par for the course. My sig isn't there for nothing.
I don't know if it's raw sienna -- it looks kind of like a sort of wax in a tin, that "orange" -- pretty transparent for artists colors -- very pale orange. And it goes on before the rub -- I'll have to find that video and post a link so you can see it.
Sandpaper, Oz, well I'll tell ya........there's nothing wrong with filing during this stuff, even if you're scraping, as evidenced today.
Okay, so that brings me to today. Remember I said I bought a piece of 3/8" x 1-1/2" x 27" hot rolled steel from Lester yesterday? Well today I painted some muriatic acid on it outside to take off the mill scale, but it was too cold work well, and it just did a partial job. I didn't have a container big enough to submerge it in either. So after a half hour of repainting it with the stuff and a large part of the scale gone, I rinsed it off and took it down to the big shop to mill one edge more or less flat, and brought it back to the tiny shop to scrape.
The idea was to make a small straightedge that I could use on the sides and bottoms of the ways to check and/or scrape them. I have a big 4' straightedge, but it's way too big!
So things were going swimmingly well -- it was nice to work with something light in weight, and that could be clamped in the vise. And sinc the edge was so narrow, it was really fast to scrape. But after getting ridof the initial hump in the middle and about 10 scrapes I wasn't making much progress. I tried scraping harder, but the blue just wouldn't move.
That's when I broke out the big heavy rasp and laid the scraper down. Ysee I finally remembered that 2 days work didn't even remove a thousandth of an inch (at least for me and my HSS scraper), so if there was 2 thousandths to remove........well I could do the math.
So, bottom line, don't feel committed to the scraper in moments like this, there's nothing wrong with filing the high part down if your blue isn't moving after some determined scrapes and trials.
I find that with a nice big file, no handle, laid flat on the work I can actually feel the high areas becaus the file has more bight there -- it sticks.
And a few minutes with the file really did the job. There was still scraping left to do. But not 4 days worth. I finished the straightedge this evening. It isn't pretty (yet).....but it's straight. It instantly let me find that the bend in the ways was really mainly in one of the pieces, not both. So I started on the worst edge to turn it into a reference for the others. That way I can measure the variation and know where to scrape them to.
Again, I got only so far and then it slowed, so I broke out the file and went at it, removing several scraping days worth of material in a few minutes. By the end of the day I had my edge.
So that's the lesson fo the day. There's no shame in filing on a scrape job.
And also, don't put it off. Because if you go 10 scrapes and then file, you might as well have just done 1 scrape and then filed -- you're at the same point in the process either way. One might be a day quicker than the other!