Building and/or restoring machine tools requires scraping to bring surfaces to a precision fit. For years we offered a small booklet entitled Old Time Mechanics that included a brief introduction to scraping. That article and seven additional are included in this new anthology.

You don't find scraping described in modern machine shop texts. You have to go back a century or more when it was a required machinist skill. Here you get articles starting with Appelton's 1880 Cyclopaedia of Applied Mechanics and progressing through the 1917 edition of Machinery's Encyclopedia.

Since scraping is more easily learned by doing than by reading, you'll find that all the articles here cover essentially the same material, and many use almost the same illustrations. But each author adds his own special twist. Probably the most difficult part in getting started is knowing how to grind a scraper to the "right" shape. And you'll get good advice on that in these pages.

Great info gleaned from the Lindsay Publications library. Read it, sharpen an old file, and start scraping. This can help.