Eddy, What type of wood are you trying your scraper on? Cabinet scrapers are best used on hardwood. if you are using it on softwood it might produce “dust” like you say.

Eddy, I have struggled somewhat with my scraper as well. I have a #81, which although different from the 80 in some ways is essentially the same tool as far as how it works. I’ve found a few things helped me, mostly through trial and error.

1. Sharpen that blade to the utmost of your ability. I think it is just as important to the functioning of the tool to have it as supremely sharp as possible as it is for say a smoothing plane. This may or may not be useful to you, as I’m sure you know how to sharpen, but it gave me a better idea as to how to approach this particular tool:

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/sharpening80cabinetscrapers.aspx

2.several things make decent burnishers in a pinch. The key is that it must be as perfectly smooth as possible; hardness is secondary. Scraper blades are somewhat softer than typical plane irons.

3. Be very delicate when turning the hook, and don’t try to make it to “strong”…you should just barely be able to feel it. If the hook feels uneven, ragged or *very* pronounced, remove it, hone again and try again.

4. Try rotating the tool forward slightly, so that the front edge is angled downward into the wood a couple of degrees and the trailing edge is angled up a couple degrees; imagine the tool being a lever along the axis of travel with the edge of the blade as the fulcrum. Try pushing it this way to get a little better bite and less “chatter” or simply riding atop the wood.

5. Try lowering the blade a little. Get a little more of the blade showing and it will take a thicker shaving. This is hard to do on a scraper compared to a bench plane, obviously due to the lack of mechanical adjuster; you have to do it yourself. I’ve had good luck with two methods. One way is to lay the tool down flat, with the blade in it but not tightened, on a flat piece of soft wood. Holding the tool down flat, Push the blade downwards with a firm pressure while tightening the retaining screws (not the thumb screw). Play with the pressure of the thumb screw to change the shavings also; it will force the blade into a slight curve like a card scraper. You can also put a sheet of paper under the front of the tool to give a little more clearance to get a little more blade exposure.

Tuning the scraper for use is definitely challenging, no doubt. I found it to be a fair bit trickier than my bench planes, mostly because it involves less mechanical precision and more intuitive adjustment going by “feel”.

Don’t give up! When it clicks for you it will be immensely satisfying.

Full disclosure: I also bought a new blade for my scraper from Hock tools since the one that came with it was a home-made monstrosity that I couldn’t get to take a decent edge for anything. The Hock blade is *outstanding*.

Also, still feel far from having absolute mastery over this tool; but at least feel as though I can get some positive results.

It appears there are a few of us having problems with this tool.

Thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations, Chris. Sounds like you’ve put a lot of time into trying to get the tool to sing! I’ve not had much luck with the #80 (or scrapers in general) so will give it another go this weekend and try your suggestions.

I followed David’s thought and had a quick search on Paul’s blog for information on sharpening cabinet scrapers and found this: http://paulsellers.com/2012/11/faithfull-80-bench-cabinet-scrapers-ok/

George.