On 4/3/2011 3:26 PM, Bill Noble wrote:
On 4/3/2011 6:05 AM, Jack Stein wrote:

I like a standard large roughing gouge which also works in seconds.
Large being the key.

Looking at the bowl pro, and some others, the business end looks like a
standard segmented planer knife that is on my grizzly planer. Looks like
a fun project to make one of those with one of my spare inserts. I like
the carbide idea, should last a while...

http://tinyurl.com/3j3wek7

1. beware of large roughing gouges - they take dramatically more skill
than a 1/2 or 3/4 inch gouge and can easily catch - just use a 1/2 inch
spindle gouge - for little blanks like that, if it takes you 30 seconds
to round them off with a 1/2 inch gouge you aren't doing it right

This has not been my experience. My roughing gouge is 1 1/4" and I
bought it at a house auction 30 years ago. before that I used a
standard 1/2 roughing gouge. The difference was immediate and awesome.
I don't recall any learning curve other than how to hold the tool.

2. suggest you eschew carbide - it's not needed, it's brittle and it
doesn't take the type of edge you need for wood - use it if there is a
lot of grit or metal in the wood and you have to do a lot of cutting,
but otherwise just use HSS

I can't argue here, as I never used a carbide lathe tool, or anything
other than standard tools used 50 years ago. I know it's a pain keeping
razor sharp edges on my HSS tools. I keep seeing all these fancy insert
tools with carbide bits, and, since lathe work is more of an aside than
an avocation to me, I can't see me investing too much in tools for the
lathe, although using one of my planer inserts and making my own
interests me quite a bit, no pun intended:-)

--
Jack
You Can't Fix Stupid, but You Can Vote it Out!
http://jbstein.com