thanks for the kind words about my site, guys. Wayne, I make tools for the
satisfaction of making tools and to have a fairly extensive arsenal of
tooling. In particular, I find it a real price saver to make hollowing tools
since I can make one for about $5 when it would cost me $75 to buy it, and
the making is easy. A lot of the manufacturer's cost is making it fancy and
paying wages and machine time. You know what wood turner's wages are like
:-) so there can be a huge savings. Also I prefer an Oland tool to a bowl
gouge and it is simply an easy tool to make. That all said, I still
recommend buying an inexpensive, HSS, beginner's set when starting to turn,
and learning to use and sharpen the tools. With head ducked from the
flaming, I have not experienced enough difference in the effectiveness of
the more expensive tools to justify the price difference. After all that,
take a look at http://www.aroundthewoods.com/contents.html#con07 for some
tool ideas. Making them is just plain fun.

--
God bless and safe turning
Darrell Feltmate
Truro, NS Canada
http://aroundthewoods.com
http://roundopinions.blogspot.com
"NoOne N Particular" wrote in message
. ..
Hi all,

I have been wanting to make a few of my own lathe tools for a while. The
prices of what I see seem to be very high. At least I thought so before I
started looking for raw materials. I priced 18" pieces of 1/4 x 1 1/2 M2
and M4 tool steel for $110+ and $170+. DANG!!!

So the questions are, what do you use for raw materials (I would assume
plain carbon steel), where do you get it, and what kind of tools do you
make?

TIA,

Wayne