Recently there was some discussion regarding what kind of gouge to
buy. From what I read, the primary focus was on fitting the gouge to
the lathe and, more generally, to the type of work that was to be
done.
Sometime back, at least 2 or 3 years, I read that with a gouge you are
pretty much paying for a machined groove. That got me to wondering
why one could not make do with buying a piece of drill rod and having
someone with a mill do the honors and machine a groove down the length
of the rod. Apart from getting the mill work done to your own specs,
I don't really see a downside to this.
I looked around on the Enco site and found a piece of .5 O1 drill rod
3' 'for a bit less than $8.00. After milling the groove about all
that would be left to do is harden and temper the piece. At such a
low price, you could buy several and experiment a bit.
Has anyone done this and if so, any tips?
http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...INSRAR2&PMAKA=
619-1610&PMPXNO=16719366

theoretically this is feasable though not everyone has a milling pal.
Also, there's quite a variety of profiles for the groove, adding to
that a variety of profiles
for the tip (angle and how far back the grinding goes). this applies
to the 1/2 bar
and then again to 5/16, 3/4 and so on.
go ahead and make a few 3 foot bars. After milling and tempering, cut
them in half. I'll buy
half of each. tempting isnt it?

On 18 , 16:24, Kevin wrote:
Apart from getting the mill work done to your own specs,
I don't really see a downside to this.
I looked around on the Enco site and found a piece of .5 O1 drill rod
3' 'for a bit less than $8.00. After milling the groove about all
that would be left to do is harden and temper the piece. At such a
low price, you could buy several and experiment a bit.

Get a machine shop to price this on a one-up basis. Then get a heat
treating place to do this, also on a one-up basis. Hardening and
tempering simple steels like O-1 and W-1 are easy when the piece is
small. Not so easy when it is large. And then, you are getting a steel
which is far inferior to the ones usually used for gouges -- M2, M4, or
powdered steels.

It is virtually impossible to home heat treat those steels -- the recipe
is too complex and you need to hold temperatures within close tolerances.

Bill

Max63 wrote:
theoretically this is feasable though not everyone has a milling pal.
Also, there's quite a variety of profiles for the groove, adding to
that a variety of profiles
for the tip (angle and how far back the grinding goes). this applies
to the 1/2 bar
and then again to 5/16, 3/4 and so on.
go ahead and make a few 3 foot bars. After milling and tempering, cut
them in half. I'll buy
half of each. tempting isnt it?

On 18 , 16:24, Kevin wrote:

Apart from getting the mill work done to your own specs,
I don't really see a downside to this.
I looked around on the Enco site and found a piece of .5 O1 drill rod
3' 'for a bit less than $8.00. After milling the groove about all
that would be left to do is harden and temper the piece. At such a
low price, you could buy several and experiment a bit.

On Sep 18, 6:24 am, Kevin wrote:
Recently there was some discussion regarding what kind of gouge to
buy. From what I read, the primary focus was on fitting the gouge to
the lathe and, more generally, to the type of work that was to be
done.
Sometime back, at least 2 or 3 years, I read that with a gouge you are
pretty much paying for a machined groove. That got me to wondering
why one could not make do with buying a piece of drill rod and having
someone with a mill do the honors and machine a groove down the length
of the rod. Apart from getting the mill work done to your own specs,
I don't really see a downside to this.
I looked around on the Enco site and found a piece of .5 O1 drill rod
3' 'for a bit less than $8.00. After milling the groove about all
that would be left to do is harden and temper the piece. At such a
low price, you could buy several and experiment a bit.
Has anyone done this and if so, any tips?http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...INSRAR2&PMAKA=
619-1610&PMPXNO=16719366


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

I have forged a few carving gouges which are much smaller than turning
gouges and being hand used are more suited for carbon steel rather than HSS.
Carbon steel holds a sharper edge than HSS and for hand work has good
duration. On a lathe they dull fast. When it comes to making turning tools,
I think you are far better off making Oland tools, scrapers, skews and
parting tools than gouges.

--
God bless and safe turning
Darrell Feltmate
Truro, NS
http://aroundthewoods.com
http://roundopinions.blogspot.com

"Fred Holder" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Sep 18, 6:24 am, Kevin wrote:
Recently there was some discussion regarding what kind of gouge to
buy. From what I read, the primary focus was on fitting the gouge to
the lathe and, more generally, to the type of work that was to be
done.
Sometime back, at least 2 or 3 years, I read that with a gouge you are
pretty much paying for a machined groove. That got me to wondering
why one could not make do with buying a piece of drill rod and having
someone with a mill do the honors and machine a groove down the length
of the rod. Apart from getting the mill work done to your own specs,
I don't really see a downside to this.
I looked around on the Enco site and found a piece of .5 O1 drill rod
3' 'for a bit less than $8.00. After milling the groove about all
that would be left to do is harden and temper the piece. At such a
low price, you could buy several and experiment a bit.
Has anyone done this and if so, any
tips?http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?P...INSRAR2&PMAKA=
619-1610&PMPXNO=16719366


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

I don't know how you could say it better than Bill or Fred's replies.
Pretty much covers all the ground on the subject from materials,
actual production and the reality of doing it as a onesy - twosy
operation.

And unless you are someone that simply enjoys all the running around,
scheduling, shipping, and plain old work, I wouldn't do it. I looked
into this years ago with he idea of making a really strong bowl gouge;
I wanted to make mine with the flute cut back only about 3 inches. I
figured that would really cut down on any vibration, harmonics, etc.

So I figured that by the time the steel got here, I had the stock cut
and the flute milled, sent it off to a knife manufacturer for proper
tempering (a place in Houston will temper your blank with batches with
other like steels, but you wait for a batch to be run) by someone
that will Rockwell stamp the tool for verification, made a handle, cut
a ferrule, polished out my newly tempered metal and then mounted it in
my handle..... *huff*...*puff*
.... I could probably buy about four of really nice gouges and still
come out waaaay ahead.

Plus I could start using them in the time it took to ship to me. And
we still aren't looking at any of the newer, fancy steels, either.

So I bought another Henry Taylor "artisan" and took the metal
polishing stuff to it, and for $60 I had a great tool.

http://tinyurl.com/26uc93

And for those that don't know, LITERALLY, the only difference I have
found in the regular and artisan grades of tools are the finish on the
metal. I have bought both regular and artisan, and being lazy if it
is within a couple of bucks I will spring for regular, but if more
than that I buy artisan.

Some tools are very well worth making; to me, a bowl gouge isn't one
of them.

Robert

Thanks for all the info. They are the reason I come here - for the
wealth of experience. And I think I read somewhe

Good judgement comes from experience -
Experience comes from bad judgment.

With its companion:
The great thing about experience is knowing when to cringe.

Thanks again

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

Please remove splinters before emailing

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:24:23 -0700, Kevin wrote:

Thanks for all the info. They are the reason I come here - for the
wealth of experience. And I think I read somewhe

Good judgement comes from experience -
Experience comes from bad judgment.

With its companion:
The great thing about experience is knowing when to cringe.

Thanks again


Or, as we say in the computer world, "Experience is the ability to recognize
your mistakes when you repeat them"...


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

I'd also mention this link which refers to an article first which
appeared in "TURNAROUND", the newsletter of the Association of
Woodturners of South Africa
http://www.marshallarts.co.za/tools.htm