Sitting by the fire reading Connelly
A guaranteed formula for a snooze!
. I'm late to the party, just noticed the thread. You've likely got a machine or two scraped by now....but for posterity...
You've correctly surmised what deburing file is. You stone the teeth down until the file has zero bite. It will skate over something flat without harm, but any burrs protruding will get caught between the teeth and knocked off. Its an important step as scraping is working to a 10th (heck the DOC is about that so its not bragging, just the reality) so burrs, even if you can't see them, need to be removed. Its the right tool for the job because it only removes material that is raised. I'll sometimes use a hard arkansas stone as well with the theory that they cut so slowly you won't be doing much of anything except knocking down the burrs.
Here's a few images from my HSM series on scraping. Its a simple enough thing it hardly needs photos, but they make it more interesting
