"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:...


snip


The basic purpose of a scraper is to refine the surface for flatness or
other accuracy, depending on what's being scraped. The scrapers at Moore
Special Tool used to scrape the ways and the table surface of their jig
grinders to +/- 40 millionths of an inch, from end to end. When they were
feeling frisky they worked it down to +/-20 millionths, just for fun. The
frosting is a final touch.

However, in commercial lathe building today, it's generally done with a
power scraper, which contains a solenoid or a motor and crank that stroke
the scraper in and out. Manual scraping can be a workout.

Misleading wording he Most machine tools have ground ways today. Power
scrapers are used for applying the *decorative frosting*, not for scraping
for improved accuracy.

I don't know if the ways on *any* machines are hand-scraped for accuracy in
production today. It is used in rebuilding machine tools, however.

--
Ed Huntress