Card Scraper

A card scraper is a flat rectangle of hardened steel, sharpened not to a conventional bevel but to a tiny rolled burr along its edge, raised with a hard burnisher. Tilted and flexed slightly, then pushed or pulled across the wood, that burr shaves off gossamer-thin curls rather than cutting like a plane iron does.

Because a scraper shears the wood fibers at a much steeper angle than a hand plane, it handles figured, curly, or reversing grain that would tear out under a plane iron -- exactly the wood a card scraper is reached for most. Sharpening one (filing the edge square, honing it, then raising a fresh burr with the burnisher) takes practice to get consistent, but the tool itself is inexpensive and nearly impossible to seriously misuse.