Make a Burnisher

A burnisher is similar the a kitchen knife honing steel. A honing steel realigns a knife blade, while a burnisher creates a burr or sharp hook on a scraping tool by deforming the metal. A good burnisher can be a little pricey, so I decided to make my own for sharpening card scrapers.

The most important part of the burnisher is the steel. You want something very hard. W1 or O1 tooling steel rod will work, but you will have to harden it yourself. I decided to buy a Hock burnisher steel rod without a handle. It is tooling steel with a hardness of Rc 64 on the Rockwell scale.

Find some wood with interesting grain and color.

Cut the wood to length and width. I decided on two hews of wood and sandwiched them for effect.

Glue the wood together. Notice the change in grain color.

Drill a hole into the center of the wood to accommodate the tooling steel.

Mount the wood on a wood lathe and shape it to fit your hand.

Sand the wood to a smooth finish.

Drill a hole in a copper pipe cap to use as the flange. I placed a bit on the drill press and aligned it with the handle hole. Then I put on the cap on the handle and drilled. This way the hole in the cap is perfectly aligned with the hole in the handle.

Polish the flange with jeweler’s rouge or other compound on a buffing wheel.

Touch up the handle with files and sand paper.

Apply a wood finish. I chose Danish Oil.

Epoxy the steel into the handle and the flange in place.

Apply a coat of Briwax and buff.

Put the tool to use.