I made some scrapers today and thought of Robert Meadow. I have received a lot of advice and tips from other makers over the years, but Robert is one of the few who gave me an idea that changed my working life.
I met Robert at one of the first Boston Early Music Exhibitions. He displayed lutes and Japanese tools, and some scrapers made from Japanese saw steel were among the offerings. Interesting, but what caught my eye was the sharpened edge. It was a single bevel, razor-fine, and honed over to form the scraping curl. He explained how such a configuration was easy and quick to renew, especially with good steel, with satisfying results. It was a revelation to me.
I had struggled with scrapers for years. I initially adopted the traditional Western method of squaring the scraper edge and honing both sides over to form two curls like a cabinet scraper. It was a working system but laborious to maintain. In the supper of 1974, I made the pilgrimage to Cremona to see the artifacts from the Stradivari workshop and saw that he sharpened his scrapers on both sides like a knife edge. The blades were so old and worn that I could not judge if there were a curl on the edge, but I think not. He just brought the edge sharp from both sides. I tried that system for a while and could never get it to work satisfactorily, so I returned to the old cabinet scraper system. That is until I met Robert, and he showed me a better way that I have been using ever since.
So, I made scrapers today, and I thought of Robert, and I thought of Antonio, and I thought of a day long ago when I sat and sipped an expresso in a cafe in Cremona.