Starting the scraping project

I'm starting in on the scraping project. I'm making my own carbide scraper from 1/2" drill rod. I milled a slot in the end for a carbide blank and hold it in with two 6-32 set screws. It's done and seems to hold very tight. I started grinding the carbide a bit on the grinder, then fine tuned it with diamond laps. I still need to put more curve into it, but I do have an initial edge.

I couldn't resist trying it. Enco sent me another surface plate and this one arrived okay. I have a 9x20 lathe compound part that I'm going to experiment with. I put some Dykem high spot blue on the surface plate and then the part. The high spots were very clear and I was able to make good progress in a few passes on getting them to spread out a bit. Of course, I don't have a good way to hold the part yet and need to put a handle on the scraper, but a quick try seems to indicate it works pretty good. I was definately able to scrape very tiny shavings where I needed to. But, I'm going to spend quite a bit of time practicing before I start scraping real lathe parts.