Pat
12th June 2018, 08:09 AM
At a recent soiree, I was asked to play with a Carbide tipped tool by forum member Aldav, as he is not a turner.
437139
So here is the warts and all review.
The tool comes in plastic packaging and with the ubiquitous allen key appropriate for the tool. The handle is of generous girth and suitable length, partially covered in non slip material. The shaft has a flat machined on the bottom, for tool registration on the tool rest.
An issue was found with the machining marks and the resultant sharp corners, not allowing the tool to move on the tool rest with catching. This was rectified in 5 minutes, #120 to #600 sand paper smoothed out the issues.437142
In operation, it behaved as any other scraper, tool down, rounded over pen blank sized Peach, Blackbutt and Redgum easily. I even played around with shear scraping, which was satisfactory.
I then decided to see what I could do with it as a "finishing" tool, so a little finial was turned from Blackbutt flooring. Approx 110mm high, base 13mm, narrow 3.5mm.437143
I even used it to hollow out Redgum end grain and learned that softly softly was the key, as the size of the tool bit made aggressive cutting more interesting than it should be. 437141
Overall, a well made tool with a moderate learning curve. Would this replace my P & N Skews, no, but carbide tipped tools have their place in the world and I do use them when I have a requirement to.
437139
So here is the warts and all review.
The tool comes in plastic packaging and with the ubiquitous allen key appropriate for the tool. The handle is of generous girth and suitable length, partially covered in non slip material. The shaft has a flat machined on the bottom, for tool registration on the tool rest.
An issue was found with the machining marks and the resultant sharp corners, not allowing the tool to move on the tool rest with catching. This was rectified in 5 minutes, #120 to #600 sand paper smoothed out the issues.437142
In operation, it behaved as any other scraper, tool down, rounded over pen blank sized Peach, Blackbutt and Redgum easily. I even played around with shear scraping, which was satisfactory.
I then decided to see what I could do with it as a "finishing" tool, so a little finial was turned from Blackbutt flooring. Approx 110mm high, base 13mm, narrow 3.5mm.437143
I even used it to hollow out Redgum end grain and learned that softly softly was the key, as the size of the tool bit made aggressive cutting more interesting than it should be. 437141
Overall, a well made tool with a moderate learning curve. Would this replace my P & N Skews, no, but carbide tipped tools have their place in the world and I do use them when I have a requirement to.