$9.00 for little piece of flat steel?

[John Schreiber]

Why do scrapers cost so much?

It's not that they aren't very useful and 7 - 9 bucks isn't that much, but why don't they cost far less. I'm using one now which I cut out of a broken Japanese saw blade and it works pretty well, but I want to try the real thing.

We're talking about a flat piece of metal. You can get eight of them out of a square foot of thin (but high quality) steel. Cleaning up the edges can't cost that much and most users can do it themselves. Three for $2.00 sounds more likely for me and throw in some little plastic envelopes.

Am I missing something, or is there a better way?

[Mike K Wenzloff]

Why do scrapers cost so much? ...We're talking about a flat piece of metal. You can get eight of them out of a square foot of thin (but high quality) steel. Cleaning up the edges can't cost that much and most users can do it themselves. Three for $2.00 sounds more likely for me and throw in some little plastic envelopes.

Am I missing something, or is there a better way?

Start a business. If you make them for 3/$2 I'll buy every set you produce. Three different thicknesses. The size of the Bahco ones is my preference.

Heck, I'll go $3 for the set and still buy them all. But I do want them cleaned up, even sized. Wrapped with a piece of VCI paper.

Putting my being a smart-Alec aside (but I was actually serious), people have long made them from worn saw blades. The new scrapers available currently are a bit hard steel than a hand saw blade, but the hand saw blades are fine.

Take care, Mike

[David Tiell]

Start a business. If you make them for 3/$2 I'll buy every set you produce. Three different thicknesses. The size of the Bahco ones is my preference.

Heck, I'll go $3 for the set and still buy them all. But I do want them cleaned up, even sized. Wrapped with a piece of VCI paper.

Putting my being a smart-Alec aside (but I was actually serious), people have long made them from worn saw blades. The new scrapers available currently are a bit hard steel than a hand saw blade, but the hand saw blades are fine.

Take care, Mike

Mike,
I've often heard about making scrapers from handsaws, but I can't find any info on how to cut the saw. Did a search on here, but after 2 pages of threads I still didn't have any luck. So, how DO you cut the saw steel to make a good scraper? I'd be afraid of heating it too much with a dremel or something like that, but then, I failed all my metal working classes back in high school, so what do I know?!

Thanks,

Dave

[josh bjork]

Score with a hand grinder and bend to break. I have one set aside for this and to make some marking knives out of and I looked for it for 15 minutes today! It is resisting its fate.

[Phillip Pattee]

Yeah John, and your homemake scraper is just as good. The difference is the premium you pay for the convenience of having it made for you.

[glenn bradley]

There may be some "Everlasting Gobstopper" theory going on here. It'll take me quite awhile to wear out the 4 or 5 scrapers I've got (in various shapes). If they sold them to me at 3 for $2, they'd only get $2 out of me for life ;-)

[Greg Cole]

John,
Steel prices worldwide are nuts now.... the steel market fluctuates like the stock market. Roughly 1/3 the worlds steel supply is sitting on boats in shipyards in the far east (ya know the big manufacturing country where "everything" is made these days) waiting to be unloaded. Granted much of that steel is architectural building grade steel, but having that much of a global supply tied up has an awful ripple affect across the board.
One another side note, China poured something like 1/2 the concrete in the WORLD last year (hence the usage of the architectural steel demand).
I use alot of very hard materials & abrasion resistant materials on the day job and I still choke on pricing for some tool steels and abrasion resistant material (and tooling to work it).
And as Glenn said, a $9 scraper will outlast any of us.. unless you use it all day every day.....
IMO, my scraper collection is some of the most practically spent $ in my arsenal. Just for final smoothing on expensive figured stock, a $9 tool can do what $1,000's of dollars of tailed tools can chew up.

Greg

[Mike K Wenzloff]

David T.
It's easy but do wear safty glasses. I didn't use a cut-off wheel. I used a hardened awl and score the saw blade several passes against a steel rule. For the first snaps where the saw blade is long, I use to slip it between a couple stout pieces of Jatoba right at the score line, clamped to the edge of my bench and whack it sharply and it snaps off. Once the pieces fit in a vise, I used a vise.

If you alread have a Dremel-type of tool, you can of course do this a tad faster because you can grind a "snap path". If you do grind a line, it doesn't need to be deep. A testament to all the hand saw blades out there where the toes are snapped off.

I now use other tools. But the score and snap method is how I have always done it from a vintage saw blade.

Glenn,
My point is if I could buy them for that I would resell them and the OP would go broke. Tis true.

Greg C.
Think steel prices have gone up? Try brass. Trust me, it's gone up 2 to 2.5 times what it cost just 1-2 months ago. Some kinds in that past 2 weeks. We purchase a lot of both.

[John Schreiber]

No doubt a scraper is a bargain even @ $9.00.

I made mine by cutting it with a pair of tin snips then filing. Not a real problem, but it came out as a kind of skewed quadrilateral rather than a rectangle. Maybe I could make them myself and charge extra for that shape.

[Greg Cole]

David T.

Greg C.
Think steel prices have gone up? Try brass. Trust me, it's gone up 2 to 2.5 times what it cost just 1-2 months ago. Some kinds in that past 2 weeks. We purchase a lot of both.

Mey Mike,
No brass here, we work on food processing machinery, but use alot of stainless, stainless tool steels, Hardox, bronze etc.... I write all our PO's.
Quotes from Castle Metals, Ryerson Tull etc are all valid for about as long as it takes to burn the paper they're printed on. Last year I dumped about $20K on stainless for our stock, today that pile of steel would be at least double up....

Anyway, back on point.... I'm always amazed at what can be done with such an economical item....

Cheers.

[James Carmichael]

David T.
It's easy but do wear safty glasses. I didn't use a cut-off wheel. I used a hardened awl and score the saw blade several passes against a steel rule. For the first snaps where the saw blade is long, I use to slip it between a couple stout pieces of Jatoba right at the score line, clamped to the edge of my bench and whack it sharply and it snaps off. Once the pieces fit in a vise, I used a vise.

If you alread have a Dremel-type of tool, you can of course do this a tad faster because you can grind a "snap path". If you do grind a line, it doesn't need to be deep. A testament to all the hand saw blades out there where the toes are snapped off.

I now use other tools. But the score and snap method is how I have always done it from a vintage saw blade.

Well, let's see, I might be able to complete that process in 1 hour, and with some practice maybe get it down to 20-minutes per scraper (that's just for cutting a reasonably rectangular piece of steel). So there's
$27 an hour, before subtracting cost of goods sold, marketing, the whole bit . So I'd say $9.00 is a bargain.

Now, what blows my mind are the $29 burnishers, the burninshing guides, etc. I use worn out, $5 router bits (the woodcraft sale bits) stuck in a piece of scrap wood.

[Bill White]

Now, what blows my mind are the $29 burnishers, the burninshing guides, etc. I use worn out, $5 router bits (the woodcraft sale bits) stuck in a piece of scrap wood.
from James C.

Gotta say "right on" to that one.
I made mine from a wrist pin, turned a couple of comfortable handles, stuck 'em on the ends. That's my burnisher. Valve stems work too.
Bill

[David Tiell]

David T.
It's easy but do wear safty glasses. I didn't use a cut-off wheel. I used a hardened awl and score the saw blade several passes against a steel rule. For the first snaps where the saw blade is long, I use to slip it between a couple stout pieces of Jatoba right at the score line, clamped to the edge of my bench and whack it sharply and it snaps off. Once the pieces fit in a vise, I used a vise.

If you alread have a Dremel-type of tool, you can of course do this a tad faster because you can grind a "snap path". If you do grind a line, it doesn't need to be deep. A testament to all the hand saw blades out there where the toes are snapped off.

I now use other tools. But the score and snap method is how I have always done it from a vintage saw blade.

Glenn,
My point is if I could buy them for that I would resell them and the OP would go broke. Tis true.

Greg C.
Think steel prices have gone up? Try brass. Trust me, it's gone up 2 to 2.5 times what it cost just 1-2 months ago. Some kinds in that past 2 weeks. We purchase a lot of both.

Thanks, Mike!!! Now I'll grab the next old saw I see cheap at a yard sale and give it a go!

[harry strasil]

plasma cutter works fine too, so does a sheetmetal squaring shear

[Mark Singer]

A scraper is a great tool! They last forever almost. In many cases they out perform a hand plane. I don't think I could work without one. Properly sharpened it is the ultimate dressing tool!