How do you reckon a scratchstock blade should be sharpened??

[Shady]

I was knocking a new one up tonight, using old jigsaw blades for the cutter (nice and thick as opposed to hacksaw steel), and it struck me that the cutting action is much closer to a scraper than a plane/chisel blade.

So I reckon I should be putting a scraper style 'burr' on, rather than a normal razor edge like a plane/chisel blade. Do you agree, and if so how do you achieve that on (say) a 1mm wide, 0.5 mm thick blade for string inlay??

 

[Anonymous]

St. Roy (Roy Underhill of "The Woodwright" TV Show and books, patron saint of galoots) had a show on scratchstocks and he sharpened his with honed, square (90º) edges. That is the only way I've tried it and it works well.

 

[Shady]

Roger, sorry, my brain's in Saturday morning mode: which edges are at 90 degrees to what?

Do you mean the 'sides' are at 90 degrees to the front and back (which I don't agree with - I put a fractional relief on them so as to minimise mangling of the sides of the 'trench'), or do you mean the 'bottom' is at 90 degrees to the face (ie when the stock is stood vertical, the bottom of the cutter is horizontal), which would work, because one tends to tilt slightly off the vertical whether pushing or pulling the tool..

I've never really thought about it before: I tend to just flatten the back and whack an edge on, but now I'm intrigued...

 

[Chris Knight]

Shady,
As discussed in another thread, edges must be square like this

 

[Shady]

Gotcha, thanks... My head can cope with that! I feel a little experimentation coming on....