Keith please remember the rules of scraping I taught you. Watch out when you get near the edges or they will get rolled over. Those edges are important especially when getting deep in the dovetail your scraping when using the straight-edge. Also you can double cut the blue until you get every square inch covered before doing the crosses. If any of the readers want larger straight-edges I have some in stock and I also have them on ebay.

I like seeing the "Rucker" cast into the handle. Nice. Thanks.

A hundred years from now the Rucker Tool Company tools will be highly sought after by collectors and machinists.

Just want to belatedly say that, given the difficulty of producing videos, balancing a career with home life and volunteer work, how truly appreciative everyone is for your more than dependable contributions to our knowledge and entertainment. Many revered KZfaq producers seem to be struggling with content lately but you seem to have the formula well in hand. Congrats and continued success!

I just got mine yesterday. GREAT! Thanks.

I'd love a mini anvil or mini 2" straight edge from Rucker Tool Co. Something neat to have on the desk.

Nice design Keith, and useful tool. Thanks for sharing and best regards from the UK.

This is one of the best vids on how to scrape.

Another great video by Keith ! Rucker Tool Co what a great idea! Thanks Keith👍👍👍👍👍

Nice job!

Rucker! Yesss!

Great video and loved watching the scrapping. It looks addictive. I can picture spending hours working on it to the point where you can no longer focus your eyes 🧐!

The Bessel points are located 22% in from each end. So close to ¼ than 1/3.

Very cool. I may have to give this scraping business a try.

great work mister and the ultimate scraping is the end of the work

It still amazes me that for all the precision of machining equipment, there is still no substitute for hand scraping to make a surface both as flat as it can get as well as making it suitable for sliding contact with another surface.

Actually I think I understand scraping better now than I did before, although I don't get much call for it in the watchmaker trade. Good content as always.

Those are great thank you for sharing. We like these being shorter for us small micro machine guys. lance & Patrick.

Always a pleasure to watch. Pete from over the pond

Keith: The low spots in the bottom means the casting shrunk in those areas resulting in high stress concentrations that were exacerbated during the milling, grinding, and scraping processes shown in the video. The straightedge won't be stable until it's appropriately heated treated and aged. (I've heard that heat treating co.'s can achieve aging during the heat treatment process. Consult with them for details.) If the straitedge is unstable it won't achieve the expected precision/stability and there's going to be very disappointed buyers. I'd suggest discussing this issue with Robyn Renzetti, Joe Piezinski, and other experts you know to consider whether this precision tool is ready for prime time.

A tool that will rival any work of art, nice work

GREAT idea about providing castings, I'm in. Also, you might consider having a chat with Mr. Pete about providing castings for some of his designs. He has many successful products from his company back in the day that he sold as kits, but has no interest in reviving the business. I would LOVE to acquire some castings based on Mr. Pete's designs and building some of his machines. M2cworth

Not sure how old those castings are, but they need to age for some time to allow the stresses to relieve themselves- you can see after you milled away the surface tension, the piece moved some more and you had the high corners. I suspect they will continue to move and your scraping may be for naught.

THANK YOU...for sharing.

i've been wanting to go to bar z for years but i just haven't been able to swing the cost of it... maybe next year. always appreciate your videos, i've learned a lot about scraping.

Nice job and Nice design, though I am surprised that while it was on the mill you didn't clean up the ends (probably 20/20 hindsight). Keep up the great work.

Great video Keith. Cheers

Well done mate👌

first: good work! second: I think you must grind both small edges (left and right), 3rd: do you have some heat cicle to "make them aged" - to prevent time induced disortion, to stabilese that iron? (in "old days" block engine casts have to sit outside floundry for 1 year to go from Summer heat to Winter cold)

You really should serial number them I was making fishing rods and was forgetting which one was made when It will add to the professionalism even if you stamp them proto 1 ect Some day when your old you will be glad you did

Nice work.

Awesome

Those little straightedges seem like perfect candidates for someone's shaper. Hmmm...Abom79 needs to mount a _Keith Rucker Straightedge_ onto his shaper. Wouldn't that make for an excellent video?

Looks good with the logo on it. Just a small nit pick, you said you want a thermal separation between top and bottom to avoid warping. In reality thermal gradients are what cause temperature related warping. If the top is warmer than the bottom it would cause it to expand and make the flat bottom surface cup ever so slightly. You really want the whole straight-edge to be the same temperature as the environment you're using it in but if it is going to be warmer you would want the temperature to be uniform throughout the casting. What you said about those tabs being for mounting wooden "feet" made me wonder if putting a wooden griping surface would be feasible to reduce transfer of heat when you hold the straight-edge. I doubt that it would make much of a difference, but if you're already going to mount some pieces of wood, seems like it would be a good idea to allow the casting to accommodate pieces that would also serve as a handle.

ur gonna be in the history books man

It also doubles as a Brass knuckle

Hi I have been thinking about cast iron. In the old days the fresh raw castings were stored out doors for sometimes long periods of time. This resulted in stress relieving the castings. What if you threw the raw casting into an oven. Run the castings up to what ever the can do, 400f? A period of time till the casting is thouroly heated through. After a slow cool off would the casting be more consist through the mass. Then do the rough machining. Thanks for the vids

That’s awesome! I wish I had the ability to make my own tools like that. Many times I need an 18-24” straight edge but damn they are too expensive for me.

would there have been any value or benefits to squaring the end of the casting?

Is it thick enough to add a bubble in the center of the handle to make it a precision level and a straight edge?

Every scraping demo I see is good. Each time, a little more of the process falls into place for me. First time seeing it, it was bewildering, and seemed like it would be a process that would never end. I keep telling myself that I would likely never have to work to that degree of precision, yet I keep watching. In the past, when watching how something is done takes over, almost like an obsession, I've later found myself facing the task. The tools or equipment is there, the job needs to be done, but everyone else there has absolutely no clue where to start (and I can't keep my mouth shut). Guess I'd better find me some practice items ...

Dicovered ur channel from Windy Hill Foundry

Hi Keith, great to see another cool project on the go, thanks. On quick question, did you consider running the ends of the straight edge through the mill to clean up the moulding lines? After doing such a beautiful job everywhere else, the rough casting marks at the ends looks "untidy" to me.

How about cryogenic freezing to stress relieve the casting?

Great video. Informative.

The rough machining would have been a good job for the planer!

How was the metal stress relieved and aged ??? The good straight edges were both. Drop a line fella and thanks too.

Nice video, noticed the ends weren't done just wondering if they would be finished?

I wonder If giving the sand mould a pre-heat would help with that hard edge...? As it sounds to me like it's the iron hitting cold during pouring... Maybe introduce a bit of Ferro-Silicon as well into the melt...?

Nice I would like one when you're ready to sell them

3-4 hours?!?!? :o This process would need more people, One to do the bluing and contrasting and then other just gets those referenced pieces, they scrape the blue off and then give it back for checking... would speed it up like nobody's business :D

You're neglecting the effect of heat input from your warm hands where you grasp the camelback and the cooling from the water based cleaner you spray on the reference face you're scraping. Cast iron expands a trifle with a change in temperature (6 to 7 millionths per degree F) and it conducts heat pootly. It takes an hour or two for a small casting to reach thermal equilibrium. Warm the camelback by handling and cool the face with water based cleaner and you'll distort the casting an important trifle. If by working steadily, you scrape your straightedge casting flat to full bearing (as you represent in this video) the temperature differential between the gripped portion of the camelback and the mass of the reference face may be several degrees. Not enough to detect by feel but probably enough to detect with a IR camera. If you allow that straight edge you scraped flat to rest overnight, the next morning it will print convex on your surface plate. This will not be evidence of metallurgical instability but of negligent heating and cooling of the casting during the scraping process. Many scraper hands have been bit by this snake particularly scraping long skinny work like straightedges. Including me. The lesson to be learned is to handle work quickly in a way that minimizes heat tranfer from your hands AND to use a cleaning product with a low heat of evaporation applied sparingly from a damp rag rather than a spray. I prefer Ronsonal lighter fluid (naptha) for four reasons: it evaporates quickly AND it has a low heat of evaporation (1/12 of water) AND it comes in a handy dispenser container convenient for issuing small amounts AND it doesn't promote rust like paint store naphtha solvent.

Keith, I have what may be a dumb question. I have looked at and used your program that calculates the sfpm for a "standard bandsaw". I have a three wheel band saw that I am trying to use for metal cutting and I am trying to determine the blade speed. Does your program work or does that third wheel screw things up?

Keith your awesome

Once you achieve the flatness you want, where do you store such a thing. And does it change it's flatness over temps, humidity and time?

Sweet, Keith! We who took the scraping class at your place get first crack at the castings, right? ;) I keed, I keed! You can mark me down as a definite purchaser as soon as they’re available.

Perhaps a silly question but if you don't have a surface grinder could you get similar results in flatness using precision ground stones?

Now you own a company? Nice!

For the holes, I would use brush hones from brushresearch.com. That will give you smooth holes with no flashing.

Would consider much thicker like an inch rather than about a quarter as is, coul dbe hard to scrape something so thin?

8:25 wouldn't this have been better on the K&T Horizontal as well? Or are you just showing multiple ways of machining these? Just curious as to why you didn't use the horizontal as I would have thought it would have done a great job on this.

I've asked this before, but doesn't the wheel's diameter decrease as its grinding? Wouldn't that affect the overall result?

I think that it would be nice to number them, you could keep a folder on who got whatever number. You’d have a file on the color, number, size, and address of who bought it. More paperwork!

Novice question: do the magnetic transfer blocks not run the risk of tipping the piece given that they're pressing against raw casting?

After grinding 45 degree angle and then scraping,how do you know it remains exactly 45 degrees,or is that not critical?

when your scaping one side how would you check if its parallel to the ajoining edge rr should i say the bevel side

Nice tools. Sad he doesn’t reply to anyone other than another KZfaq superstar

Keith, did you normalize the castings?

Sorry if this might be obvious to some, but I'm only a hobby machinist: can you check the straightness of something with a straight edge that is shorter reliably and if yes, how do you do it? Because in my mind there is the case where you have for example a ring with a very large radius, and the part to measure consists of a segment of this ring so that over the length of the straight edge the error is within the tolerance, but not over the overall length of the part. How would you be able to measure that?

What type of Grinding wheel do you use? Silicon Carbide?

Hi Keith, they look great! Please put my name down for a purchase when they become available. Thank you!

Another outstanding video Mr. Rucker. Just a quick question. How would you use one of these straight edges..? I don't recall ever seeing one or didn't recognize it if I did.

I would love a 6". 9 is a bit too big for my shop

Hi Keith, are they cast in Grey Cast Iron, or some kind ofl Ductile cast iron?

very nice I like!! I'd be interested in a purchase pending on price (with shipping) to Australia.

Keith good video I want to purchase one let me know

0:12 Getting ready? I Think you've already started.

In the future, whenever sharing someones youtube channel, web address or e-mail, please edit it in as text in the video, so it is possible to pause it and see the letters. Or perhaps leave it as a link in the description. Thank you kindly!

Put me on the Reservation Purchase list for a 9" !

Why don't you try it before you scrap it?

next one, is it possible to see the blue ink test on a piece just left from the machine? just to see the difference ... if it's worth it .... i belive that the machines do a better job, than a man with a punch in his hand...

I know these are small castings but should they be seasoned before finishing?

The new shop is still echoey. Need more machines and stuff to take that away.

Keith, did Richard teach the circle method of power scraping in your classes? Seemed like he really pushed it for roughing in my class but I didn't notice you using it.

Very cool. People are gonna be throwing money at you. There is no amount you can stock that you won’t sell out in the first hour of posting them for sale. Just a guess.

I have better success putting my part on a angle in the grinder so your not in the cut the whole time. Heat build up will be less and rock wear will be better, so flattness will be better also... Imo😀

Nice work as always Keith! While in California if you have some time for a road trip down towards San Diego, check out the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum, I think you would enjoy it. www.agsem.com/

If you've got any small CNC projects or surface grinding stuff, mounteriemachine.com would love to help out.

first!