Burnisher

A burnisher is a very hard, smooth tool (usually a steel or carbide rod) used to polish or «burnish» metal. In woodworking, burnishers are most commonly associated with sharpening card scrapers. By rubbing the burnisher along the scraper’s flat face and edge, you harden and smooth the steel, raising a tiny burr that makes it cut.

For beginners, learning about burnishers comes up when you use a card scraper (a thin flat tool) to smooth wood. After sharpening the scraper’s edge on a stone, you run the burnisher along the face to create the actual cutting edge. This might be the first time a new woodcarver learns the concept of a burr. While not used for regular carving blades, burnishers teach the principle of polishing and edge care — showing how metal can be refined to a sharp finish.

At BeaverCraft, we focus on carving tools and provide leather strops for sharpening, but the concept of burnishing is similar. For instance, our Dual-Sided Leather Paddle Strop LS1P1 is used to polish straight-edge blades, working much like a burnisher does for scrapers. Beginners using BeaverCraft scrapers could even use a hard steel rod or polished nail as a makeshift burnisher. The key takeaway is the same: polishing (burnishing) is how you finalize a scraper’s edge. As experts note, a good burnisher makes the burr «much easier to turn» and helps the scraper maintain its cutting ability.