Whilst in general it's true that tail-supported work is less likely to flex, and you'll get more accurate cuts, the extent to which this is true with anything within an inch or so of a chuck is debatable. I'd say that stiffness with small projections depends more upon the overall state of the chuck jaws, and very importantly how much of your stock that they are gripping. And, of course, the diameter of what you are turning.

So if I want to take ten thou off an half an inch of steel sticking out an inch from the chuck, I wouldn't support it if it was gripped by most of the jaw depth. But under identical gripping circumstances, if I wanted to take a couple of thou off a 1/8" diameter projection, then I would if I could.

So yes it's a suck-it-and-see sport, but only up to a point. I'd say that it's as much to do with applying a bit of common sense to the materials you are using, as anything. And yes, inevitably you learn that the painful way…

Some of these tool sets are a bit like supermarkets trying to sell you more sliced ham or whatever than you really wanted. Since you only really need half a dozen different shapes they have to invent a few unnecessary ones to bulk up the 'bargain 12 tools for the price of 6'.

Gary

Would recomend looking at this thread
**LINK**

I tend to use the same tool for most basic work on the lathe but the bulk of my work is done on my Chester 626 mill

Bob

If you look at this site you will find all the Din shapes and their numbers clearly marked.

http://katalog.mav.cz/categories.php?rozbal=6105

I have a set of brazed carbide tools like yours, I found most needed touching up from new. I now only use them for rough jobs, cleaning old rusty stock, skin on cast iron etc.. Buy some HSS and practice grinding your own, it will all come together eventually.

Gary,

Something else you might wish to look at are "Diamond" cutting tools.

Easy to sharpen (only one facet) and produce very good results, there are also many homebrew variations of the tool.

If you want a starter project you could do a lot worse than make one of them Tangential toolholder.

Regards

Paul

I must also add my vote for the Diamond toolholder.

When I recently started out and being too intimidated to try grinding my own HSS tools I thought that I could avoid the issue completely by only using indexable carbide tools on my little Unimat. These worked ok for some things, but on other materials, especially some steels the finish was horrible. I tried with and without lubricant, faster, slower, shallow cut, deeper cut, but nothing I tried would give an adequate finish.

So having read good things about the Diamond toolholder and despite the price, I decided to order the appropriately sized tool from the manufacturer in Australia. On arrival, after a quick perusal of the instructions I fitted the supplied toolbit into the little grinding jig, turned on the the newly purchased 6" bench grinder for the first time and less than 2 minutes later had what appeared to be a perfectly ground bit. A few strokes with a diamond hone, before attacking the same piece of steel that had given me so much trouble with the carbide tool. The result was a resounding success as smooth as the proverbial babies bum.

My only relatively minor complaint with the tool is the need to rotate the tool post to 12 degrees. And as the lathe is also the drill and mill, toolpost removal and refitting is a constant occurrence. Although apparently this isn't necessary for the larger diamond toolholders which are of a different design.

Regards,

Clive

Edited By clivel on 05/06/2012 21:34:46

I was looking at one of the Diamond tool sites, and saw refrence to Crobalt tools, sort of a half way between HSS and Tungsten Carbide, looks very useful, proberble a better tool material for our lathes than TC, if you can get it, I'm going to ask my tool supplier if he knows of it. Won't be today, theres 4 to 6 inches of snow on the ground, it was supposed to stop at noon , but it's still falling lightly. Ian S C