hu lowery
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It started out to be a punch bowl.
Oh man, I'll bet you had to use a big ol' shovel to clean up all the shavings from that clothespin blank!
Did you have to bolt down that new lathe to keep it from walking out of the shop?
I know some folks have had success making micro turning tools out of allen wrenches. Might be better steel than a roofing nail.
Those old lead head roofing nails were made with the intention of them being able to punch through two layers of old fashioned heavy tin, they are hard! Not sure if they are as good as allen wrenches but the price of the nails is considerably cheaper!
I guess I'll have to cut a flute in the next gouge blank and turn a handle for it.
A smidge cheaper I'm sure, but I've got a decent bucket of allen wrenches from cleaning out various estate and yard sales at ~$0.10 or less each. I suspect that either work about as well as long as the metal is hard and the size is right.
I've made several in the "skewchigouge" (http://www.crownhandtools.ltd.uk/Beecham skewchigouge.pdf) form and they seem to work surprisingly well without a flute (mostly for turning thimbles which are not quite as small as this, but close). OTOH if you do make a micro-fluted gouge I certainly want to hear all of the details about how you did it
About shaping that mini-gouge, I have a 350 grit CBN wheel on it's way, along with a 220 grit four way CBN wheel. Should be just the ticket to shape it! Bought them from Ken Rizza. The particular pairing wasn't on sale but he put a pretty nice discount in as we talked.
WOW - that is a HUGE HUGE coin under that punch bowl