Buying a Rasp
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Tagged: Wood rasps
I would endorse the comments about Auriou rasps – just used my fine one to round the corners of a inch-thich slab of walnut. No need to even sand afterwards.
I have two – one fine (R/H 7″ Grain 13) and one coarser (R/H 12″ Grain 10) and they suffice for all my requirements.
Sadly it appears that they are struggling – see my post entitled such.
Any of the above mentioned rasps will do the job. The Ariou rasps are hand-stitched, which means that each point or tooth placement is determined by the craftsman making the tool. This results in some randomness in placement of the teeth, as opposed to the regularity of the machine-stitched rasps. On a practical basis this randomness makes for a much smoother surface-even their relatively fine tooth patterns can remove a lot of wood very quickly, but still leave a surface requiring very little additional cleanup. If this is a tool you will be using even occasionally in the future, I would recommend the Ariou if you can afford it-this is a lifetime tool if taken care of and will give much better service than the inexpensive options-in this case you definitely will get what you pay for. Also as noted in the post above, see Paul’s blog post and the Forum entry about Ariou struggling. If we want to maintain and encourage the production of new quality hand tools we have to be willing to buy them.