Recommendation needed: a "real" burnisher for card scappers (and the like)

[violins88]

I teach hobby violin making, trying to follow Davide Sora’s method as closely as possible. Currently have 8 students. 4 of them are at the scraper stage. I have the spring steel, 0.4 mm thick, as recommended by Darnton years ago. My most promising approach seems to be to hold the scraper against a 90 degree block, to keep it vertical against the 2000 grit diamond plate. Then use carbide burnisher. I am practicing. Sometimes successful. Use lube from behind the ear. 

[JacksonMaberry]

1 hour ago, violins88 said:

I teach hobby violin making, trying to follow Davide Sora’s method as closely as possible. Currently have 8 students. 4 of them are at the scraper stage. I have the spring steel, 0.4 mm thick, as recommended by Darnton years ago. My most promising approach seems to be to hold the scraper against a 90 degree block, to keep it vertical against the 2000 grit diamond plate. Then use carbide burnisher. I am practicing. Sometimes successful. Use lube from behind the ear. 

I also prefer to use (mostly) scrapers, regardless of thickness, ground at a 90° angle like a card scraper - as opposed to ground like a typical cutting tool with a single or double bevel. I do this for two reasons: first because it gives me twice as much cutting burr, and second because I cut myself badly with my first 45° beveled scraper in the burnishing process and that put me off of it.

My thinnest scraper is just a kidney shaped flexible pottery scraper. They're a couple bucks and I use them right out of the package. I'm always surprised at both how well they cut and by how fine a surface they leave as a last scraping stage before burnishing with equisetum. 

[David Rosales]

My making self-study has been on hold for the past couple of years so I am by no means an authority here, but this is the one I have in my kit and it seems to work well.

 

https://www.woodbywright.com/shop/p/burnisher

[LCF]

On 12/4/2025 at 6:08 PM, HoGo said:

Now, that's Maestronet in it's best! Who woulda think burnishers can be such a hot topic

I will shamelessly mix two metaphors here in that an ill wind blows no good but you can't teach an old dog a new trick. But I learned a new trick!

After making some new HSS wood lathe tooling I realised that in order to burnish an hss scraper (lathe type scraper) I would need a tungsten carbide burnisher. A screwdriver just won't cut the mustard. 

Luckily I have a sub-pile of chipped or blunt mill cutters in my todo pile such as these two 10mm solid carbide Kennametal endmills which are perfect for making a burnisher. If you have a mill-owning friend perhaps they can spare something like this?  The flat on the cylindrical portion is easily avoided in use. 

Middle cutter is as-is. I partly ground off the flutes on the rhs cutter taking it down to approx 9mm to make it easier to fit in a handle without working its way out. 

Then a handle from a hard piece of allocasuarina plus a stainless ferrule and m6 grub screw to lock it in. 

[Riccardo964]

On 12/14/2025 at 4:30 AM, LCF said:

Then a handle from a hard piece of allocasuarina plus a stainless ferrule and m6 grub screw to lock it in. 

That's beautiful! Good job!

Riccardo964

[JacksonMaberry]

On 12/13/2025 at 8:30 PM, LCF said:

I will shamelessly mix two metaphors here in that an ill wind blows no good but you can't teach an old dog a new trick. But I learned a new trick!

After making some new HSS wood lathe tooling I realised that in order to burnish an hss scraper (lathe type scraper) I would need a tungsten carbide burnisher. A screwdriver just won't cut the mustard. 

Luckily I have a sub-pile of chipped or blunt mill cutters in my todo pile such as these two 10mm solid carbide Kennametal endmills which are perfect for making a burnisher. If you have a mill-owning friend perhaps they can spare something like this?  The flat on the cylindrical portion is easily avoided in use. 

Middle cutter is as-is. I partly ground off the flutes on the rhs cutter taking it down to approx 9mm to make it easier to fit in a handle without working its way out. 

Then a handle from a hard piece of allocasuarina plus a stainless ferrule and m6 grub screw to lock it in. 

Always wondered what that wood was like! We have many of them in Hawaii. Several Australian species were introduced over the last two centuries. Quite dense I expect? It's called "ironwood" in Hawaii 

[LCF]

1 hour ago, JacksonMaberry said:

Always wondered what that wood was like! We have many of them in Hawaii. Several Australian species were introduced over the last two centuries. Quite dense I expect? It's called "ironwood" in Hawaii 

Just one of very many hard and dry Australian woods!  Generic name is sheoak. 

[Brian in Texas]

I bought an Accu-Burr burnisher. Here's what I think about it.

 

[Riccardo964]

On 1/2/2026 at 8:30 PM, Brian in Texas said:

I bought an Accu-Burr burnisher. Here's what I think about it.

Great video, thanks for sharing!