For any major scraping task, nothing beats a ball joint scraper. The handle can be set anywhere in a 70° cone, allowing a comfortable grip and effective blade orientation. The handle locks and unlocks solidly with a quarter turn. Another advance over its predecessors is the hand rest on the blade, allowing you to apply substantial pressure to speed up your work.

The scraper is available with a carbide or high carbon steel (HCS) blade. The carbide blade is preferred for paint scraping and the HCS is preferred for finishing bare wood surfaces where maintenance of a finely formed edge is more significant. The 75 x 75mm x 1.5mm HCS blade comes with one edge bevelled. You may wish to bevel one or more others, but it also works perfectly well treated as a heavy duty cabinet scraper with square burnished edges.

The 50mm long carbide blade requires a specifically designed holder and both edges can be used. Both blade assemblies are sold separately from the handle and ball joint so that you can mix and match. Both scrapers are particularly useful on large surfaces like tabletops or even floors. You might wish to round the corners a bit to avoid sharp transition lines between adjacent passes. Both scraper assemblies are 216mm long.