The Woodpeckers Mini Carbide Scraper is a hand-held scraper that uses a standard carbide tooling insert cutter as a scraping blade. These are the same cutters you now see in helical heads of jointers and planers. It is advertised as a glue scraper but I found it to be a nice wood scraper as well, which I'll discuss later in this review. It is a clever use of these carbide blades but I would expect nothing less from Woodpeckers.

The carbide cutter blade has 4 usable edges so you can rotate the blade in the handle when one edge gets dull.

The cutter is 15mm x 15mm, which is approximately 5/8" on a side and held in place by a simple set screw. Loosen the screw and you can carefully rotate the blade to the next position. The blade that is included with the tool has a slight camber on the edge, as shown in the photograph, so it is less likely to scratch your work surface. This also gives you more control of the blade and I found that you are able to be very selective about where you are scraping. There is an optional square edge insert blade that works well when you want to get into an interior corner.

The scraper has a polycarbonate handle that is 5-1/4" long by 1-3/8" wide by 7/16" thick and is "Woodpecker Red." Since the handle is plastic, and carbide will not rust, you can wash the tool in running water for an easy clean-up.

The first and obvious use for the scraper is to remove dried glue from a glue joint. You can use it to remove glue that is partially setup but the sharp edge easily removes dried glue as well. You can either push the scraper to get a very aggressive cut or pull the scraper for a much more controlled cut. I found that by pulling the scraper, and at the same time raising and/or lowering the handle, you could pinpoint where you want to scrape and easily work one small area at a time.

Here you can see that I have scraped a small area and was able to remove just the glue and not mar the wood at all. I was pleasantly surprised that with a light touch you could slowly work your way down to the wood surface and scrape away the glue without lifting or removing any wood fibers.

I mentioned earlier that there is an optional square edge blade for getting into interior corners.

I did not have one of those blades for this review but in theory the picture shows how you would use that particular blade. I would have some concern about using it in the cross-grain direction as shown here but if used with a light touch I believe you could easily remove glue squeeze out in the corner without tearing out the wood.

It is obvious that you could use the scraper to remove other items on a surface such as drips in finishes, tape residue and for that matter, old dried tape as well. However, I was curious on how well the carbide cutter would act as a detailed wood scraper much like a hand-held card scraper. Given the small size of the blade and the cambered edge I thought I would try cleaning up a rounded-over edge on a board from a hand plane.

I used a hand plane to create a curved edge on the board (shown above) which left behind a slightly faceted surface. I create these types of round-over surfaces all the time on furniture projects and I usually use a card-scraper to clean them up. The Woodpeckers Mini Carbide Scraper worked quite well removing the facets.

Although it is hard to see the fine details in the photograph the carbide scraper left behind a very smooth, almost burnished, surface. I couldn't use it over a large surface as quickly as a card- scraper but it would be excellent for small areas that a large scraper wouldn't fit into or for small detailed work.

I'm not surprised that the folks at Woodpeckers have come up with another clever and useful tool for your shop. I was very surprised at how much control I had using the carbide cutter screwed onto the end of a handle. Given the amount of thought that goes into a Woodpeckers tool, such as a molded handle to fit your hand, they have created another tool that has a variety of uses in your shop.

Jeffrey Fleisher has been a woodworker for approximately 20 years and a professional woodworker for the past 6 years. He is the president of his local woodturning club, the Woodturners of the Virginias and past president of the Northern Virginia Carvers. You can see some of the furniture he has made at www.jeffswooddesigns.com. He can be reached by email at furnmkr@gmail.com