I recently bought several Xmas gifts from Lee Valley, and included a "From Me To Me" in with the shipment. I purchased the Veritas Scraping Set, which includes the Veritas Variable Burnisher, Scraper Holder, Jointer/Edger, an 8" mill bastard file, and 4 Super Hard Milled Scrapers.
The first thing I noticed is that you actually get 6 scrapers, as one each comes packaged with the burnisher and the scraper holder. Secondly, my inital impression is that all of the products appear to be pretty solidly built. I was a bit concerned about possibly receiving some lightweight cheezy plastic crap based on an earlier review I'd read somewhere - but all seem fine. The burnisher and scrpaer holder *are* plastic ("glass filled nylon" for the holder), but they seem very sturdily built. The jointer is extruded aluminum. All use brass hardware.
Having never used scrapers before, I figured I'd start with this set so as to give myself the best chance at doing a good job out of the gate. So far so good - I just put a 5 degree hook on one of them, and knocked off some nice shavings off of a piece of scrap maple. It left a very nice finish - just as I'd been led to believe was possible. As it's 11:00pm here, I haven't had much time to really do too much work with them, but I'll post follow ups as I put more hours on them. I was just psyched to get out and acutally use them!
My only "gripe" so far is that the variable burnisher sort of hops up onto the edge of the scraper as you push it across, and then hops off at the end. I sort of think it's just because you can't acutally see the burnishing rod going across the surface, like you could with just a steel bar. I was a bit concerned I might run the thing off the edge an then gash my wrist on the scraper as it slid off the end. This has NOT happened, and I feel very confident it won't - as the plastic housing for the burnisher is of large enough size to pretty much prevent it.
Final Note: The service at LV has been excellent, and all of the products I've ordered so far appear to be of top quality. While they probably don't have *the* lowest price on everything, it appears they are really trying not to sell crap. I'll buy from them again.
JP
********************************** Disassembly/reassembly is frequently quicker, and results in MUCH cleaner refinishing than trying to get crap out of every nook and cranny all put together. YMMV.