Thread: Which burnisher?

Matter of choice, I have been using a triangular burnisher that I made from an old file as an apprentice, for 40+ years

I've got the round one - I think it's a bit easier for the curved scrapers and I regularly use it for the rectangular ones.

I also have the plain round Two Cherries burnisher; I use it on all my scrapers including the blades in my 80’s and my 112 scraper plane.

Six of one & half a dozen of the other. For donkey's years, like china, I used a re-purposed triangular file, for both straight & curved scrapers. Then I decided to try a bit of 6mm HSS rod I picked up at a wood show, & have been using that for the last 15 years or more.... Burnisher red.jpg

The reason I switched is because the HSS rod was super-polished compared with my doctored file & the polished metal slides over the edge of the scraper more easily. It's turned thousands of edges & has only a few faint marks to show for it, so I reckon it's repaid the $7 or $8 $ I paid for it at the time.

With a round or oval burnisher, the force is applied over a small area so it takes very little pressure to form a burr, you need to press a bit harder for the same effect with a flat burnisher. However, the triangular burnisher should have rounded corners (for tight curves) which you can use instead of the flats if you need to turn a really large burr.

The differences are trivial, & you'll quickly adapt to whichever style you choose, so go for whichever one appeals to your sense of logic....

Cheers,

Just to clarify my burnisher has rounded corners and id highly polished.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I've been struggling unsuccessfully with a cheap scraper from the local DIY store and using the shaft of a screwdriver as a burnisher. I just took a look at Paul Sellars on YT and armed with that and the advice above, I'll go for the round burnisher. Being presented with the three shape options threw me as I thought I was missing something obvious.
Cheers,
Pete

Veritas Variable Burnisher.
Its what I use.