In a batch of old tools I acquired I found a mere flat piece of metal, steel I guess, very nearly rectangular, thick enough not to be able to bend with my fingers, about 2 inches by 3 inches, not real shiny anymore, and stamped into it is
Henry Disston & Sons Philadelphia U.S.A. No. 20
Googling Disston "No. 20" found me a lot of tool entries, but no No. 20 for Disston. Usually some other number and maybe another company like Miller Falls No. 20 Right Angle Triangle Level.
Can you post pictures somewhere, and put the link up here? You have me very curious. Disston was/is? a saw company, of course. Saw companies usually make other sharp things. It sounds like a shim plate for a large carpenter's plane- that thing that goes down alongside the blade.
aem sends....
It's almost assuredly a card scraper. If there's more than one edge with a sharp burr (or once was sharp), that's what you've got on your hands - unless it was never sharpened, and then that's still what you have on your hands. ;)
RicodJour spake thus:
That is indeed a scraper, otherwise known as a "cabinet scraper". One of the most unknown tools to most people, and certainly the best way to achieve a silky-smooth finish on wood, especially hard wood. A thousand times better than sandpaper. Undoubtedly, yours can be cleaned up and resharpened. (Sharpening requires first grinding and honing one edge and one face flat and smooth, then using a burnisher to "turn" a hook over the edge; this hook becomes the cutting edge, and a good scraper will give you shavings as wide as the blade that you can literally read a newspaper through.)
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