Make Your Own - Turning Tools!

[mik]

Meet a nice guy a few years back and he was a true old style craftsman and spent most of his life in Ascension Islands - where one boat a year for supplies was it!! you guessed they had to improvise a lot.

Her's one of his tips - go and feret around your Dad's or any persons tool box for a metal file - they were called "Bastard Files" All sorts of sizes and shapes - these were all made of the finest HSS available.

Hone the end to suit - I have a few special favorite shapes. Make yourself a long handle to suit and there you have it!
They make fantastic free tools, also you don't have any fear when sharpening - if you get it wrong - you go back and do it again - no worries about ruining that expensive Robert Sorby!

I now actually prefer my own home grown set - try it!

Another quickie - sharpening on the hoof - run your tool over your bench disk sander with fine paper and you will get a good sharpness very quickly - not perfect but great for a quick fix!

Thank you for viewing

 

[vick]

you can also find HSS rectangluar blanks on the internet at places like MCS and grind your own tools. I have done this a couple time, but I will have to say I still like Sorby tools alot better.

 

[Mudder]

Please be very careful with files. They are super hard and they CAN and DO shatter on occasion. The heat treatment of files vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. And some can be as hard and brittle as glass.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm telling you from experience. I wear a scar over my right eye from a metal file that shattered. Had I not been wearing safety glasses (as I often did not while I was young and stupid) my handle might have been “one-eyeâ€

Many use tham and have no problems at all. I was not as lucky.


A good friend of mine (thanks William) alerted me to an article written by Russ Fairfield who is also an advocate of NOT using an old file for making a cutting tools his article can be found here.

http://www.woodcentral.com/russ/russ10.shtml