How to hand scrape metal for flatness

How to scrape metal with hand tools is a skill all machinist need to learn. In this video I give a step by step process to the art of scraping

[ThisOldTony]

That looks like it took a heck of a lot of work, blood, sweat, tears and editing!

[pfineyut]

Wow, this takes me back 40 years to when I was an apprentice Fitter and Turner. In our apprentice school we all were given a cast iron table 6" square. We had to hand chisel it, then file it, then draw file it and then scrape it until it was over 90% flat (using bluing). One of our first projects and we used that flat edge throughout our apprenticeship..

[toddk.]

I was surprised to read a lot of (what looked like to me) criticism of this video in the comments.
I'm actually in the middle of scraping in a small Chinese milling machine & scraping in my own
straight edges. I thought Dale did a very good job on this video. I felt he should know I liked it.
Good job Dale. Keep them coming.

[stefanobio]

I spent hours learning and practicing hand scraping, have scraped machine beds, adjustment keys, surface plates for posting.

[damionparson]

True old school work that requires a lot of time and patience but the presentation was very well done. Truly a skill of its own.

[lakeschoolrestorationchann]

Unbelievably awesome. I had never heard of this and wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me about it. Makes perfect sense how this works. Thanks so much for making this 😀

[keithmonarch]

I just caught this video. I still have my scraper. I was taught flaking, blue it, until all the material matches. Naturally the final step flake it in. It is a ART until you really learn it. Nice 👌

[chickenbonelives]

I kinda can't believe I watched this whole video. I just started getting interested in machining and don't really know where to start and this just excited my love for tedium. It's the little scrapes I like the best.

[thomassutrina]

Seen a hand full of scraping videos including one at Vintage Machines and Ox tools Thank you for going through the thinking of what when. and not using a power scraper.

[iamthepeterman]

I’m about to buy a CNC lathe with hand scraped ways, and I found this very interesting! Thank you!

[rideRgetRDEn]

My friends always wonder how I know so much about random shit. Well this is how...

[lucianonougueiradevasconce]

Hi Sr, my name is Luciano from south Brasil I liked so much your work. I have a very old machine and I trying to give her some precision, You gave me inspiration, thank you.

[CameronMcCreary]

I have done hand scraping when I was younger and I found grinding flat and grinding lubrication grooves in the work was the way to go.
If the work is too large to grind, I send it out to a shop with a larger grinder. I like hardened and ground ways.
By the way I did thumbs up this video.

[luboshcamber]

Dale thanks for taking time and effort on something others charge a lot of money for. It helped me tremendously and I have learned a lot. God bless.

[michaelmorgan]

In the uk we do it slightly different tend to use curl strokes and put the blue on using felt pads spent 50 years building high precision thread grinding machines a lot of scraping for flatness and alignments. Hard work especially columating machine bases

[black_sheep_fab]

Absolutely fascinating. Seriously couldn't turn it off. I've heard of scraping ways before but never truly knew what it was. Your patience is second to none!

[PenninkJacob]

OMG!!! WOW, Best machinist videoeo EVER!!!! Thank you you are amazing! I loved watching You are the

[Gurtderpson]

Tool maker here. Very cool video, I think I'll try this when I buy some old equipment for my garage. I've used yellow for tempered/discolored steel, but I've never seen using yellow to contrast the blue. Very cool

[Cody_OConnell]

I'm reading Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy and I had some trouble visualizing this process until I saw this video. Great job.

I'll write out the relevant part of the book for any interested readers. They say the first thing you need for mechanical accuracy is "flat master plane" which you achieve with three 4ft x 4ft cast iron plates that you use this bluing process to get flat. You mate two of them together and find the high points to work them down. But if you only did this with two plates, you could end up with a ball and socket scenario where one is concave and once is convex. So you need the third plate to reference both of those to which will keep them all honest. And they said each plate and it's built-in rib supports weighs 2000 lbs. Pretty wild and brilliant stuff. Cheers

[jabidwell]

A great video, very educational. As a dentist we use the same technique when adjusting the occlusion of people's teeth after a restoration or crown is placed. The dark spots with the light centers we call a "donuts" and checking, cutting, rechecking for new donuts I call chasing the dots. As with what you are doing eventually we get to even contacts, we then polish the surfaces and call it done. Again a very clear demonstration.