cabinet scrapers are normally pushed. the technique normally used is to put your two thumbs in the middle near the bottom and pull back with your fingers. this puts a slight bend in the blade. You get your weight behind and push. Its a bit of a learned technique, at first it seems awkward but gets better as you build the right muscles in your hands. youll also feel the heat on your thumbs from the blade getting warm until you learn to keep them the right distance from the cutting edge.
You can get a holder for them so you can pull back, Lee valley sells them. they are also good if you don't have lots of strength in your hands.
card scrapers come in various thickness, thinner for finer work, you can use heavier ones for paint scraping. My dad was a cabinetmaker and then a carpenter. he always joked that the long side was used by Joiners and the short side by Carpenters , it was a dry insult towards carpenters who do such fine work. You can of course use it both ways.
I sharpen both sides front and back and that gives me 4 cutting edges. I dont' sharpen the short sides Its common to burnish the edge of the card scraper to get a hook and that helps it take more off. If you didn't use one so much and wanted to keep it in your pocket you can put those plastic blade protectors on or round the ends. I find if I just slightly round the corners then I don't cut with the corner, that causes scratches.
I don't think this is the sort of thing you;d use on the outside of your house much but if you had a table with a solid wood top and shellac or laquer or somethign , well you can take the finish off fast. without heat or chemicals. when I do my floors the last step I use is to go over the whole floor with one. sanding rounds off everything , a card scraper leaves a better finish because it actually cuts the fibers flat rather than just wearing them down like sandpaper and that produces a better surface for fine finishing. If you use a thicker one and burnish a hook on it and get good with it it is very surprising how much material you can remove quickly.
if you want a medium one, just look for a handsaw with a kink and sacrifice it. , use a dremil to cut the size to about 2" x 4" and you can make several from one saw. they are very handy to have in your pocket. handsaws are hard enough to cut but soft enough that you can file sharp.
If you have lots of a special shape you need to scrape you might find it handy if you take a card scraper and shape it to fit a molding or curve. you can make a little pattern of the shape , then cut the detail with a dremil with a little cutting disc. even just to follow a certain radius they are handy.
if you want to spend a hundred bucks this little set is really nice to have. I bought one and I really like it. the file holder lets you sharpen it square ( like an ice skate) without putting it in a vice. You can clamp it in a vice and then use a hard screwdriver to burnish if you don't want to buy that burnisher. the holder is handy for when you want to pull back as it's hard to hold it properly when you are pulling , but that's possible too.
http://www.leevalley.com/US/gifts/page. ... 3220,61448
