Thread: Discussion - Future of Woodturning Tools & Directions

The carbide materials have changed a lot in the last several years. This new 'micro grained' or 'nano grained' material seems to have the ability to get as sharp as any other steel or cutting material. Problem for cheap guys like me is that it is difficult to sharpen it.

robo hippy

this is one of the points I was trying to make what is the sharpest possible is a long way passed what most consider sharp The grain of hss is one tenth the size of what the finest grain carbide is capable of today. I would venture to say though that most aren't getting a 1UM edge on their HSS tools. in a comparison even with the proper wheels to sharpen the carbide I think it would be found that the "sharpness" of the edge on either tool would be comparable, as would be the cut.

Great question Scott.

I hang around on forums devoted to other recreations (motorbikes, XC skiing) and some are dominated by gear questions, esp US ones. And the main assumption is that the next innovation will transform their experience.

While I reckon with gear you should buy well and cry once, after that there's a law of diminishing returns.

A basic kit of HSS tools is clearly good enough even for professionals. Recently read a US article written by a production turner who made a living doing spindle pieces with scraping only tools.

I'd like to see a TCT tip that emulated a scraper in dimensions; ie. 6mm or more in thickness and maybe 19mm wide. That could be used in cutting mode (as per a scraper with a ticketed/rolled edge but with less maintenance needed). Expect it would cost a bomb but new-material grind wheels would bring it into the realm of the maintainable.

rsser,
What you are describing is known locally as 'The Big Ugly' tool. It has been used by the Oregon Coastal myrtle (california bay laurel) turners for so long, even the old timers (some over 80 years old) don't know who started using them. The traditional tool is 3/4 inch bar stock about 30 inches long. On each end is a cutter of tantung steel, 7/8 inch wide by 1/8 thick and about 3 inches long. It is silver soldered onto the steel bar. One of the guys in the club is helping me do the soldering and he said the new flux material is lousy because of no lead rules. He puts brazing on both pieces of metal (bar and tantung) then brazes them together as you can't flow the brazing compound like the silver sloder. I am not sure about all the technical stuff here because the only thing I can do with metal is grind it. One end of the Big Ugly, is more finger nail grind, and the other end is more ) grind. Sharpen in the morning, turn till lunch time, sharpen again after lunch. Turn till beer-thirty (closing time). Myrtle is fairly abrasive and has inter locking grain. Oh, you wear a heavy leather glove on your 'handle' hand. I have one, and the square bar stock is pretty tipsy if you use it on edge. I make mine from 1 inch by 3/8 inch stock, and 3/4 inch wide by 5/16 inch thick bar stock. This is much more stable. I don't think you can ticket a burr on it, but this stuff sharpens really well on standard aluminum oxide wheels. The tantung comes in 6 inch long strips, and the 1 inch wide strips are about $60. You will get far more mileage out of this $ amount than you will out of a comparable $ amount of the carbide cutters. It does need some support under the cutting edge as the material is fairly brittle. We were talking about the Tantung a year or so ago. Stellite is another comparable material and is the cutter on the Woodcut Coring tool. I have one piece of stellite that I put on some bar stock using JB Weld, a 2 part epoxy that is made for gluing metal to metal, well, for gluing just about anything to anything else. I have yet to fit it to a handle. I should have another You Tube clip up in a few weeks about the fluteless gouge that Doug Thompson makes and I love, and I show one picture of it in there, and will do a story about it eventually.

robo hippy

I guess I should have added here that this is a DIY (do it yourself) tool, and from what it would cost to produce them for sale, probably not worth it to manufacture as most would probably prefer to make their own. Probably part of the reason why it is called the Big Ugly. It ain't pretty, but it works.

robo hippy

Originally Posted by

At the moment Carbide is only used to make tools that scrape (hence pattern makers) but that could change.

When I look at my brother-in-law's pattern making toolkit his turning tools are almost all negative rake scrapers. That's the way the trade is/was taught. Precise dimensions, not surface finish, is their aim.

As and others has pointed out, when woodturners use carbide inserts they usually use them in scraping mode. However, the tips can be used in cutting mode, as can be seen when they are used on, for example, cutter heads.

I have experimented with using carbide inserts in cutting mode (ie with bevel rubbing) and they work as expected, like a small skew. That's OK if you are spindle turning.

Most bowl turners (until RH converts them) prefer to use a bowl gouge in cutting mode and what they need is a cutting edge formed by a flute profile. As yet carbide tips haven't been readily or economically available in such profiles. I expect this is partly to do with the challenges of pressing and then grinding/polishing the flutes on such profiles, and the high cost of developing the technology to do this weighed up against the relative small volume demand for such a product. Unlike surgical applications of this technology (eg), I don't expect to see such profiles in carbide at a cost that would be attractive to most woodturners any time soon.

The same probably applies to tantung.

Does it matter how we achieve the end result using whatever tool at our disposal?[/QUOTE]

For the sake of argument it does not matter at all, if end result is what we are judging it by. Having said that though, you wouldn't mow the lawn with a pair of scissors?

Thanks Reed for the post about tantung. New to me and good to learn about.

I make the odd tool now and then and have been in the engineering side of things for many years. What I have noticed is that the wood-side of things is way behind engineering by a few decades, although its catching up.

As to the future of wood turning it will go on as it has done for 100's of years if not more absorbing technology as it goes along. As for tungsten and all its derivatives and there are very many. Many of the new fine grade super hard alloys will make it into the wood turning area as they are discovered by woodies as we have seen in the past few years.

To date I have used and use some of these fine grade alloys and the edges to great success on all manner of Aussie hardwoods. OK as Reed has pointed out re-sharpening is not so easy as HSS. But with the arrival of more sophisticated grinding wheels like CBN we can now sharpen our own.

So from my point of view the finer grades work well and the tips are not expensive when you consider the longevity of them.

Tantung [in Australia and I don't know what its made out of ] here is very expensive and it would be best bought direct from the supplier. It is good and holds an edge like you wouldn't believe for along time. Looks much like a standard chunk of HSS and sharpens the same way.

I know Tantung is a cast metal, and a bit on the brittle side. Not sure beyond that. I do have grinding skills, but not much metal knowledge beyond that. I shall have to ask after the Stellite to find out more about it.

robo hippy

It will be a slow process I reckon. I read in one magazine that most turners still have some CS tools and you can pick them out as they don't have dust on them.

I fount this:

Tool Materials - Google Books

Cast Alloy Lathe Tools

Part of a discussion with Robo Hippy and others from last year:

What is Tantung (copied from a web-site)

I pick up wood of the curb for fire wood and turning. I cut up a lot of lumber with nails, dirt, etc. and dull carbide tipped blades. Just for fun I resharpened one on the white aluminum oxide wheel that I use for lathe tools. It worked OK for my purposes.

One can buy a "green wheel" for sharpening tungsten carbide tools, not too expensive. See:

Amazon.com: 6" Green Grinding Wheel For Sharpening Stump Cutter Teeth: Sports & Outdoors

I think a good saw shop that does replacement teeth on saw blades could braze a slab of carbide on to a hunk of steel that could be ground to a scraper or bedan tool.

One can buy brazed carbide tooling that looks like this:

http://www.solarbotics.com/assets/im...3006pic_pl.jpg

and use as is or grind to taste. They could be mounted in a piece of pipe & held with a set screw or brazed or even soft soldered.

I bought several of the bottom one in the photo for $3.00 each with a 1/2 inch square shaft at a surplus place. Made in USA even.

I have used the Chinese made ones on my metal cutting lathe. They work fine for my purposes and would do fine for wood.

Originally Posted by jimbur

It will be a slow process I reckon. I read in one magazine that most turners still have some CS tools and you can pick them out as they don't have dust on them.

I find that when you are getting down to that last final shaving cut, that a carbon steel tool sharpened and honed to the nth degree will do it as well or better than anything else I have.

But not as long.

I do have a selection to choose from. Everything from home made mystery metal, through $20 for a set of 8 Chinese, to full retail on a Crown 5/8 inch bowl gouge.

I am partial to the recent Henry Taylor scraper and skew. Not shown.

Originally Posted by Paul39

I find that when you are getting down to that last final shaving cut, that a carbon steel tool sharpened and honed to the nth degree will do it as well or better than anything else I have.

But not as long.

'Sactly!

For those last few clean-up touches what is needed is a sharp tool, not one that can bludgeon thru six inches of wood without seeing the grinder.

Sadly, modern CS tools tend to be made from cheap quality steel which technically just barely falls into "tool grade" category... such as those $20 sets of 8 chaiwanese chisels. Many newcomers to woodturning start off with just such sets and replace them, when and as they can, with better quality tools. Which are typically HSS.

To make things worse, because CS is prone to bluing during sharpening - which, IMHO, is a case of bad sharpening practices and NOT the steel's fault - most beginner's learn a negative bias towards anything labelled CS.

In practise, if you can find a good quality 20year old CS chisel AND you can sharpen it properly, then the odds are good that it will become a valued part of your tool set.

I certainly treasure mine!