More thoughts about debarking vine maple - scraper technique, part 2

After working on my vine maple stave some more with the scraper technique I discussed in my previous post, I found something new yet again.

Previously I had described how the scraper ended up burnishing the wood under the bark in the process. As it turns out, part of the last inner bark removal (the cambium layer closest to the wood back) is in part due to the act of burnishing. In slowing down, I discovered that simply burnishing over this cambium layer seems to slightly compress the wood beneath, causing the cambium layer to come away from the wood. To verify that this is what is happening, I tried burnishing over the cambium with the round shaft of a screwdriver. Sure enough, the cambium could be seen to lift away from the wood and eventually to flake off.

However, my previous assessment of the sharpened and rolled scraper edge catching on just the cambium was not incorrect. Rather, it appears that the scraper technique works by using a combination of burnishing to lift the edges of the cambium and scraping to catch the lifted edge.