Skarsten scrapers

[Gene Pavlovsky]

Good morning,

Does anyone still use Skarsten (or similar) scrapers? I have one 35 mm and two 62 mm ones.
Here in Luxembourg, compatible spare blades (made by a company called HaWe) are sold in Hornbach (a German chain of home improvement stores).
I tried to scrape old paint from a wooden post, using a brand new blade, and I got a lot of horrible screeching sounds and quite slow progress.
I then used an old "beater" German jack plane to quickly get rid of the paint, this worked much better.
I expect I might have been using the scraper wrongly? I'd like to hear a good explanation of their usage, and how to file (resharpen) the blade.

I'd also like to find a good quality scan/photo of the original instructions. The best I could find on the internet is this, which is partially readable, and the sharpening instruction is rather clear:

469426

Thanks
Gene

[James Pallas]

I believe Derek Cohen posted about making some heavy bodied scrapers out of plane blades. You might checkout his posts on that subject for some info. Never made or used one myself so I have no experience with them.
Jim