Thread: Junk Tools & Fixtures

Shop made tools, just great. Necessity is the mother of.... etc, not to mention a few dollars saved along the way.

For many years I made, and still do when needed, scraping type tools from scrap mild steel flat bars etc. with silver soldered pieces of machine steel hack saw blades to the top surface. Cheap, effective and can be made into any shape the job requires.
Jim

Just acquired 3 HSS power hacksaw Blades. ! to be made into a thin Parting tool and the other a ???

May be a filleting knife ,I'll think about it,.

I have always been leary of tools made from FILES due to their Brittle nature, and SCREW DRIVERS!!!, well I made a tool from a small wooden handle and a 75mm Screw.
Must take a pic and post. Used for doing the recess on the lid of a Red Gum Sugar Bowl, for the Bowl rim to locate.

Maybe we should start a THREAD for alternate Turning tools(home made)

Jeff
vk4

I've several homemade tools as well. Not all by myself, as previously noted an engineering shop I used to do work for made several to my specification.

My latest is a planer blade I've just ground down to be a skew without a handle so you can hold it as you need up and down the length. I know, it sounds strange but Henry Taylor have just started doing them as a special order.

I've also go a couple of special tool rests being made at the moment, I'm not really a metal person so these will cost, damn I wish I still had that engineering shop on-hand.

The cheap chinese carbon steel sets can be surprisingly good. It's a cheap way to get going. I was given a set and found that only two out of the eight seemed to be poorish steel and that was probably due to not being tempered properly. They're very handy for making into scrapers.
Cheers,
Jim

The expensive tool brigade hate me.

I constantly hear the claims that ya have to spend good money on the name brand lathe tools.

I started with one of the cheap 3 tool HSS sets...... and still use them, they got rehandled as soon as the lathe was running. the only thing wrong with them is that the steel is a bit short and can be a bit of a fiddle to grind on my wide tool rest.

I moved up and baught one of those cheap 6 tool HSS sets everybody sells...again nothing wrong with them that a good shape and sharpen wont fix.

But the best value for me has been the hare & forbes 8 piece sets, I've baught a couple of them, because they have 6 flat chisels in each set......some I have used more or less as found but most of them have been reground to do specific jobs at a fraction of the cost of buying the name brand complicated grinds.
Even the gouges have been reground to give me a good choice of tip shapes.

All this 30 pluss tools for the price of a handfull of name brand tools.

Of course being the bargin vulture that I am I have picked up some name brand tools either second hand or on clearance........but claims of the steel being soooo much better I find over stated.

One of the bargins I did pick up was a 3 piece set of marples minitaure tools in high crabon.......yes they are noticably softer and you have to be a little more carefull on the grinder......but they doo hold a fair edge..and I suspect I can get a sharper edge on them than the high speed steel by touching them with a diamond lap.
I am realy liking the small carbon steel skew for finishing acrllic pen blanks at the moment.

I know lots of people make tools from found & alternative materials, but with these cheaper sets particularly the hare & forbes "red set", I dont find the need to risk things like old files, when I can get a nice piece of HSS fitted with a handle for arround $12

The other thing that has changed since I started turning is some of the smaller suppliers importing pretty danm fair chineese HSS tools in single pieces.

A 1 inch oval skew can be had for $25 and gouges can be had for between $20 and $30.

cheers

Soundman, I still reach out for my old marples half inch skew when I need a fine clean cut. As you said, you might sharpen more but the edge does seem better.
Cheers,
Jim