Over the years, I’ve often used a single-edge razor blade to scrape dried finish drips and runs flush to the adjacent surface. To scrape heavy runs or particularly hard finish, I often turn a hook on the blade, in the same manner I do with a card scraper, but to one side only. To target the area of concern and to keep the corners of the blade from digging in, I would do my best to flex it into a downward curve, again, as with a card scraper. But a luthier friend recently showed me a better way to control the cut. Simply wrap a piece of regular cellophane tape around each end of the blade, leaving the space between the two pieces wide enough to do the requisite scraping. This way, you don’t have to flex the blade, the corners won’t dig in, and the cutting will stop when only about .002" of finish remains raised to sand level with very fine abrasives. Brilliant!

—Jesse Roberts, St. Louis, MO