I brought a Veritas Cabinet Scraper with the intent of using it as part of the finishing step. However, I'm having the hardest time getting it to work smoothly. There seems to be a lot of instructions for sharpening scrapers but not very many on how to use and troubleshoot them.
The problems I'm having are:
1. The scraper is always digging into the wood when I start a stroke. Perhaps I'm putting too much pressure? If I use less pressure or loosen the main nut, the scraper doesn't dig as much but also doesn't do anything.
2. The blade sometimes jumps or rattles when I push, causing it to dig in several times in one stroke.
3. I find that the shavings are always getting stuck in the mouth to where every other stroke requires cleaning. Is this normal?
4. The burr only lasts a handful of strokes before I either feel like I'm pushing too hard to get shavings or it just makes dust. Is it normal to be constantly re-burring?
I created the burr using a screw driver as I don't have a burnisher. I can feel it with my finger and it does make (small) shavings.
For context, I'm using this on dimensional maple as an alternative to sanding. I was thinking: scrape, sand lightly with 220, raise grain, sand with 320, then dye. However, this scraping hasn't been very fruitful.