Thread: Sharpening Shavehooks

Anything wet will make the grain pop.
Scraping the molding is not a great idea. Get a good paint stripper and a stack of 3M scratch pads or steelwool. The stripper needs to be around 80 degrees. The work needs to be warm. You can set the doors in the sun to warm them up the put the stripper on in the shade. If you use stripper in the sun it will start to evaproate and dry before it has a chance to disolve the doors finish.

I have been restoring furniture and architectural woodwork sense 1962. I even owned a antique mall with a refinishing ship as a side business. Scraping moldings is very hard and takes forever. You will gouge the wood. Paint stripper is so much faster. You will need to have some Laquer thinner on hand for wiping down the wood. It will not hurt it. Don't soak it in thinner and give the stripper time to bubble. Green friendly stripper are pure crap and do not work.

I've used citrus based stripper that worked quite well.

Also a heat gun & shavehook on 3 large Victorian bay windows with 100mm wide architraves. Hobo is right; the hook can dig but you develop the technique with practice. Anyway, you're wanting it just to get into corners.

To sharpen them just follow the bevel that's already there; flat edge on a bench grinder if you've got one; convex, ditto while you rotate; concave, use a conical grinder point mounted in a drill. If no bench grinder, slipstone or fine file?

Welcome aboard Fergie. There might be more useful info on the renovate forums (check the link at the side).

The quickest for me was a propane torch and a shavehook. The hair dryer type heat gun just didn't do it, spread the heat too wide. On most surfaces I used the flame spreader head and a pinpoint on difficult areas of moulding. You have to be careful to not burn things, but a scorch or two if you are going to repaint is ok.

Being a reno in Scotland check for lead paint. DO NOT USE A HEAT GUN OR SAND IF it is old lead paint, it is bad for your health.

I found the triangular shavehooks always preferable to the curved things. With a flat edge you scrape across grain and less likely to dig in. For detail areas I cut one down to a small diamond head. I regularly sharpened using a metal grinding disc in a 4" angle grinder. One or two touches of the full edge and it's done. Beats trying to do it on a bench grinder.

Good point about lead paint

Re sharpening, as with any edge tool, the coarser the abrasive the more jagged the edge. OK to start coarse for paint removal but if used like a card scraper a finer burr is desirable.