The tangential stress and the normal stress on the scraper due to pressure  and viscous forces are
The same scraper stress if resolved according to Cartesian coordinates (parallel and perpendicular to the lower plate i.e. ) are
As noted earlier, all the stresses become infinite at , because the velocity gradient is infinite there. In real life, there will be a huge pressure at the point, which depends on the geometry of the contact. The stresses are shown in the figure as given in the Taylor's original paper.
The stress in the direction parallel to the lower wall decreases as  increases, and reaches its minimum value  at . Taylor says: "The most interesting and perhaps unexpected feature of the calculations is that  does not change sign in the range . In the range  the contribution to  due to normal stress is of opposite sign to that due to tangential stress, but the latter is the greater. The palette knives used by artists for removing paint from their palettes are very flexible scrapers. They can therefore only be used at such an angle that  is small and as will be seen in the figure this occurs only when  is nearly . In fact artists instinctively hold their palette knives in this position." Further he adds "A plasterer on the other hand holds a smoothing tool so that  is small. In that way he can get the large values of  which are needed in forcing plaster from protuberances to hollows."