Auriou #14 Knife and Spoon Riffler

6" long

Those who haven't used a well-made hand-stitched rasp have a revelation coming. Rasps are a mainstay for sculptors, patternmakers and chairmakers, but the aggressive cut and smooth finish left by these steel works of art will endear them to anyone who works wood. They excel at breaking up sharp corners, trimming patches flush in restoration work, and other wood-shaping tasks requiring finesse, control, and no risk of tearout; shaping bandsawn cabriole legs comes to mind.

Unlike standard machine-made rasps, whose teeth are stamped into shape with square leading edges and teeth arranged in regular rows (which can leave a telltale furrowed pattern), the teeth in Auriou's rasps are "stitched" one at a time, by hand, with a punch sized to produce carefully sized, triangular pointed teeth in a nearly random pattern. On close inspection they resemble shark teeth. The triangular tooth shape means that the rasp bites into the wood aggressively, and the irregular pattern prevents furrowing, so these rasps are in reality cutting tools that provide a superior finish.

While the teeth appear tiny, and their pointed shape suggests delicacy, Auriou's craftsmen prepare the rasp blanks to assure durability. Blanks are shaped by forging and hammering rather than stamping; any distortion caused by initial heat treating is corrected by more hand-hammering rather than grinding, and finally the blank is polished. The result is a cohesive "grained" structure in the steel body of the rasp making the teeth remarkably strong. Still, we recommend you respect the cutting surfaces and store these rasps where they won't bang against other metal tools.

The numbers (#) indicate tooth size. The higher the #, the finer the cut. (A #8 approximates a Nicholson #50.)

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