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Thread: Getting ready for the winter: Sharpening your ice scraper.

  1. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Dalzell View Post
    I am sure that guy from down under will soon provide a detailed tutorial on "advanced windshield fettling" somewhere in the woodshop.
    "in the woodshop" heh heh. cute.

  2. #47
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    Nornamd: You may not have read that I spent 6 years in Alaska in some of my other posts. I can also assure you that it DOES snow in Va. Some Winters we get lucky and get clear through a Winter without snow. But,snow it CAN,and sometimes quite a lot. It can,and DOES ice storm here. These are the ones I HATE,because the power lines get so heavy they break and fall down. At times we are WEEKS without power. Tree limbs also fall on power lines,and on roofs! I had a friend's roof get totally speared by a 3" branch. It normally would not have done much damage. But,this one fell straight down like a spear. Big end FIRST,somehow. Fell from a very tall tree. It penetrated clear through their kitchen roof,taking the chandelier with it. What a MESS!! Insulation,electric wires,busted chandelier all hanging down in their kitchen. And do you know who fixed it? My friend's wife!! Though her husband works at NASA as a machinist,she never lets him work on the house!! She's quite the unusual woman. Fixed everything. I happened to be pulling into their driveway when it happened. I had a plastic tarp in the back,which I gave to their son. He was in his late teens and went up on the roof,pulled out the branch,and nailed the tarp down.

    And WHY doesn't Vicky let her husband work on the house? One time when she was away he was painting the house. When she got home.he had painted a very large Runic "F" on the house(their initial, and a German last name!!) THAT got painted OVER!! Took a few coats! Vicky is a terrific craftsman whose father restored Bugattis. She grew up in that environment, helping out in his large shop. Her husband did make new bronze bearings for their furnace blower motor when it went bad. He has a lathe and a mill in the basement. Used to make some fairly tricky spare parts for Bugattis when his wife's father was still working. I think Jay Leno now has a reproduction Bugatti Atlantic Coupe that Vicki's father worked on.With his millions,I don't see why he doesn't have a REAL one!

    Anyway,I MUCH prefer to let the motor warm up the defroster,and let it melt the ice and DIRT from beneath. I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT I HAVE SCRATCHED WINDSHIELDS with accumulated fine sand(They DO sand the roads here!) and dirt. When that scraper gets sand embedded in it,IT SCRATCHES. Luckily,I was only scratching he windshields of my old 1950's Chevys,and NOT the family car! Defrosting is a much better solution than attacking the frozen windshield with a scraper. After the defroster melts it beneath,the ice and snow comes off easily. And, NO RULER TRICK is needed!!
    Last edited by george wilson; 11-26-2016 at 10:09 AM.

  3. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Haugen View Post
    Minnesota here, too. I think I have the last brass bladed ice scraper in existence. Nothing beats them.
    I found a stash of the old-fashioned brass ones down in Vermont last year, sitting on the counter beside the cash register. $1 each, so I bought 5. 4 of those have been "acquired" by family members and I can't find the last one! Damn!
    Best regards,

    Ron

    You haven't really been lost until you've been lost at Mach 2!


  4. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Kellison View Post
    I found a stash of the old-fashioned brass ones down in Vermont last year, sitting on the counter beside the cash register. $1 each, so I bought 5. 4 of those have been "acquired" by family members and I can't find the last one! Damn!
    Mine always seems to find its way to behind my truck seat.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  5. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    Mine always seems to find its way to behind my truck seat.

    jtk
    OK, I'll confess: I buy acrylic scrapers that I use for both skis and car windows by the dozen. I sharpen them when they dull, but as soon as one gets chipped up too badly I "donate" it to one of the junior racers with a locker near mine or a cheapskate buddy who thinks that sharpening them is a good use of their time. Life's too short (and acrylic sheet is too cheap) to spend my time slaving over scrapers.

    Working wood is enjoyable because of the unique challenges and opportunities that each piece presents. Acrylic is just.... plastic. A similar attitude towards working metal explains why I favor fast sharpening media like higher-end synthetic waterstones and diamonds btw.
    Last edited by Patrick Chase; 11-26-2016 at 9:18 PM.

  6. #51
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    You must be forgetting that you can make many beautiful things from metal,or combinations of metal and wood,Patrick.
    My sculpture teacher,William Reimann made incredibly beautiful sculptures from clear acrylic. Now he is doing something entirely different. I wish he would go back to acrylics.

    Try making the things below just from wood!
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by george wilson; 11-27-2016 at 8:45 AM.

  7. #52
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    George, I understand the NO RULER TRICK needed, but how can it work without a burr? ��

  8. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    You must be forgetting that you can make many beautiful things from metal,or combinations of metal and wood,Patrick.
    My sculpture teacher,William Reimann made incredibly beautiful sculptures from clear acrylic. Now he is doing something entirely different. I wish he would go back to acrylics.

    Try making the things below just from wood!
    Somehow I knew you were gonna say something like that. How about "similar attitude towards sharpening metal"? :-)

    That's obviously VERY nice work!

    I've never gotten into metalworking. I can weld passably and do basic machining as well as the next mechanical engineer (which is to say, I make Real Machinists cringe whenever I enter their shops), but that's about it. Something else to try.
    Last edited by Patrick Chase; 11-27-2016 at 10:38 PM.

  9. #54
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    One of the most enjoyable threads I've read in a long time. Good on ya Normand. Too bad we don't have a "post of the month" smiley.

  10. #55
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Belair View Post
    One of the most enjoyable threads I've read in a long time. Good on ya Normand. Too bad we don't have a "post of the month" smiley.
    Thanks Jim. For a change I had hope to keep this thread within the northern people but I got a lot of "pollution" from those guys down south. It seems I can't win!

    I have particularly like Tom Stenzel's repartee "What about the side windows where you'll run into end grain ice". Every time I read this sentence I keep smiling.

    Have a good day,
    Normand

  11. #56
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    I don't understand where you are coming from,Normand. We have snow here in Virginia,and sometimes ice storms. We have to scrape our windshields too. I spent most of my life up to age 17 in Oregon,Washington state,and Alaska.I must say I find it unfriendly on your part to invite people to stay out of your thread. This is a public forum,and everyone here is free to enter any thread he feels like,last time I checked. I have never heard of anyone asking some to stay out of their thread.

  12. #57
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    I don't understand where you are coming from,Normand. We have snow here in Virginia,and sometimes ice storms. We have to scrape our windshields too. I spent most of my life up to age 17 in Oregon,Washington state,and Alaska.I must say I find it unfriendly on your part to invite people to stay out of your thread. This is a public forum,and everyone here is free to enter any thread he feels like,last time I checked. I have never heard of anyone asking some to stay out of their thread.
    George,

    This whole thread is for fun and I know that a large portion of the US do have snow (at least some). Please don't take any of my comments personal and I was happy to see that you and Patrick did participate with this discussion.

    Back to woodworking, I wish to be able to built a tiny fraction of what you're doing sir.

    Regards,
    Normand

  13. #58
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    Unless I'm getting senile,I seem to recall that it even snowed in Florida for the first time a while back. Not that that gives lifelong residents snow scraping expertise!

  14. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    Unless I'm getting senile,I seem to recall that it even snowed in Florida for the first time a while back. Not that that gives lifelong residents snow scraping expertise!
    Hah, the folks I knew down in Phoenix just didn't leave the house if there was enough frost to need scraping. I'd bet that the folks in Florida did the same. Of course when it only happens every 2-10 years that's a reasonable approach to things I guess.

  15. #60
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    Remote starting is a great invention. I wonder if you question your decision to make your garage into a wood shop when you are outside at 10 below in a 30 mph wind scraping ice. For that mater why would anyone strap boards to their shoes and jump off a cliff? Just things I think about when I'm nice and warm inside my house being retired.
    Jim

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