Rod:

Saw the actual Sorby rep from England come to our local Woodcraft and
demo this tool for an entire hour a few years back. They were sure
they would be flying off the rack. When I was keen on buying one, I
did a lot of research before going to the demo as it is not a cheap
tool, and to really explore the full use of this tool, you need to buy
the "accessories".

Remember this tool is used between centers, and is a decorative tool
only.

The Sorby rep brought his own wood to turn all the way from UK, as he
was unable to find a tight grained, medium oily wood wood to cut the
tight checkering and small spirals. (He brought something called
""lemonwood"). Unless the wood you are checkering, knurling, or
spiraling is really tight grained, almost defect free, and certainly
without any swirly grain, you will have tear out you cannot fix. So
much for checkering, I thought.

It takes a lot of practice, and some really nice wood to make this tool
do the small stuff as the tool itself is actually a scraper, and in my
limited use of the tool, it tear out as much as it scrapes.

On the larger stuff he used the big wheel and made some nice looking
barley twists on a piece of some other wood, with a medium amount of
tear out, and explained how the tool could be used to make decorative
legs, etc.

However, here's the catch: The motion of your body and the density of
the actual piece you have impaled onj your lathe when using this tool
determines the tightness of the spiral. Since it is all done by eye,
every piece you do will almost certainly be a unique piece. Even the
Sorby rep admitted that it was almost impossible to turn out duplicate
spirals on two different pieces of wood.
Nice toy, but so much for spiraling.

Then he used the big wheel on the outside of a small bowl, using the
tool at a right angle angle to the piece. This allowed the tool wheel
to roll along the surface, giving the bowl rim a peened finished, kind
of like some of the guys do with a Dremel. On close inspection, you
could see that the actual peens were only dents, and were not cut
smooth. No problem says the Sorby guy, we'll just sand those little
jagged corners away. But after he did that, the peening was almost
lost.

With all that in mind and the fact that the Sorby rep admitted it took
a fair amount of practice to turn out good results, I passed. I had
the wonderful picture of me trying to put a textured rim on a bowl I
finished and how ****ed off I would be if I knicked a defect (which I
prize) and it tore out a hunk of wood.

Also, since this is some really blunt scraping, I wouldn't be able to
use it on anything with thin walls due to the flex in the wood when
pressing the tool into the piece. Couldn't use this tool to finish
anything turned greed due to the inability of the tool to cleanly cut
the green fibers.

Passed. But it is just my opinion. YMMV. Not a Sorby hater, I have a
lot of their tools I wouldn't be without. Just not this one.

Robert