On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:17:30 -0700, Fred Holder wrote:

Hello Kevin,

The cost of the steel is not what makes bowl gouges expensive. It is
the milling, polishing, hardening and tempering, makng and fitting a
handle, overhead of the manufacturer, marketing and shipping to the
eventual distributor, plus the distributor's markup. Have you priced
the cost of having a channel milled in tool steel and the cost of
having it heat treated as well as the clean up after heat treating.

If you have a friend who has a milling machine and will mill the flute
for you for free and another friend who does heat threating of steel
and will do it for free. You can get a fairly inexpensive carbon steel
bowl gouge from your O1 steel. I think that you will find that high
speed steel is a bit more expensive and the heat threating is much
more complex.

I have a friend who makes limited numbers of bowl gouges, very good
ones I might add, but he has to sell them for around $90.00 to
$100.00. And he sells direct.

So, when you consider everything, the prices on bowl gouges are not
really that great.

Fred Holder
http://www.fholder.com/Woodturning/woodturn.htm

Amen...
I know that Bill Noble has a milling machine and works with metal, but never
heard him mention making his own fluted gouges..


mac

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