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Triumph Stainless Steel Scraper Blades
At a glance: A scraper blade that won\'t rust? Brilliant!
Pros: Last much longer than carbon steel equivalents, VERY sharp
Cons: Higher initial purchase price, can get bent more easily than carbon steel, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR BUILDER\'S CLEANS
In detail:
Why is it smart to fit a new blade in your scraper before you start a new scraping job?
One reason could be that a sharp blade works faster, and that can make a real difference when removing a painted sign, for example. Another reason could be that an old blade that\'s gone a bit rusty overnight might scratch glass, and we don\'t want THAT thanks very much. In either case, the fact is that as soon as scraper blades get wet, they start to rust and lose their edge. If you\'re using your blade all day on a builder\'s clean, you\'ll probably wear out your blade before rusting is even noticeable. But if you only use your blade every other day, and only for a few minutes at that, the blade will be affected by rust long before the edge becomes worn through use, and you\'ll be throwing away blades that haven\'t done much work. It can be even more frustrating when the second edge has rusted inside the scraper before it\'s done any work at all.
(Tip: The edge of your blade can be pitted by rusting even when it looks OK. To check, hold it up against the light, and look very closely for tiny indentations along the edge where oxidation has eaten it away. A rough edge can scratch glass.)
Jydsk Barberblade-Fabrik A/S, Danish makers of the popular Triumph 6 inch scraper, have solved the problem by producing blades in rust-free stainless steel.
We\'ve tried them out, and can only say that we don\'t understand why this option hasn\'t been available sooner.
They come in the usual plastic pack of 25, with space for safely storing used blades in the base. The pack is black, to distinguish it from the standard carbon steel blade pack, which is a light grey.
The stainless blades themselves seem thinner and also sharper than their carbon steel equivalents. They work at least as well as standard blades; I found that over the course of a builders clean they seemed to stay sharper longer, although it\'s hard to be definite. (Note: Feedback from our customers indicates that the stainless blades DO NOT stay sharp as long as carbon steel when used all day - for example on builder\'s cleans.) It was a pleasure to pull out the scraper after a few days sitting unused in the holster, and know that it still had a sharp edge and wasn\'t going to scratch anything. It was just downright weird to be using the same blade weeks later; ordinarily, one would have gone through several standard blades in that time.
(One result of using different material is that when dropped, where the corner of a carbon steel blade would break off, the stainless blades will bend instead. A blade bent in this way needs to be straightened out before further use, or if this isn\'t possible, replaced to avoid scratching.)
Overall, these blades save the professional window cleaner time and money. They save time because less time is wasted changing blades, and never rust out. The extra expense (they\'re about 50% dearer than standard blades) is easily justified by their long life.
Highly recommended.
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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