Hi Lee. First of all may I express my sorrow at your families loss,John was a great man.
To the question you posed I would say that it mainly comes down to preference. The replaceable tip holders can be a boon but they don’t last forever and using the wrong insert can result in poor finish or damage to the insert.
Off hand Grinding of HSS is not the dark art some would say and pretty easy to master. Holders for square steel can be had for pennies and allow quick centre height setting.
Flea bay is a great place to find tools I just put used engineering tools into the search and you’ll be reading all night. Message me if you want to know more. Mick

hello Lee. If you want to be up and turning right away, can I suggest the purchase of an inexpensive set of 11 piece lathe tools with brazed-on carbide tips? They retail at around £25. I recommend them to beginners so that they have a range of turning tools, parting-off tool etc. and can be used (and abused) right away. As you develop your skills then think about the indexable type or grinding HSS or even purchasing pre-formed HSS tools.

These sets are widely available from sources such as ArcEuroTrade, RDG, Chronos and from us at Amadeal.

Hugh

Listen to Ketan, I don't know him personally, but he seems to know what he's talking about, and he worked with your Uncle(or was it the other way round).

My suggestion is, start with HSS, get to know your lathe, then you will be able to decide for your self if you need Tungsten Carbide tools.

Ian S C

Hello Lee,

My sympathies for the loss of John, he was a good friend.

I'd echo Ian's suggestion – start with an HSS set. They are more forgiving than tungsten carbide and easy to resharpen.

The TCT brazed tools are great for taking heavy cuts but are rarely a good option for precision work out of the box.

Tipped tools are great, once you have the confidence to use them properly, but few beginners will want to use the sorts of speeds and feeds that get the most out of them.

Neil

Lee

I've also sent you a PM. The not always obviously flashing envelope symbol at the top left of the page.

David

I also reckon HSS is good for starting out. I personally wouldn’t touch brazed carbide tooling. I also like Tangential tool holders as they do 90% of what I do and are cheap to run. The polished carbide inserts Robin mentioned are also good though for some jobs.

Hello,

I'd like to add my experience on this, I was shown replacable carbide tip tools cutting and they worked superbly, can't fault them, but this was on a large machine. I own a myford ML4, a much,Much smaller lathe. I have chosen early on to go down the route of HSS, as mentioned above it's resharpened and shaped to any form easily, it really is not a black art, the key is the wheel on the grinder, it's gotta be clean, free of dirt and balanced. When the HSS is sharpened the diamonds (grit) in the wheels becomes clogged with dust, they dull and don't cut so well. A clean bright wheel (it'll almost sparkle in different lights) produces a happy tool. Also a small plastic cup of water to the side helps to keep the tool cool, dip in the water after every few passes.

The tool angles aren't too critical to begin with, the wheel will form most of the clearance angle, turn the tool face 90° to the wheel and take a grind, lightly across the face of the wheel from left to right, or right to left, (your preference but alternating will help keep the wheel square and balanced), until you see red sparks from the top surface of the tool, once you see those red sparks cresting the top surface then you can stop grinding the clearance.

Next rotate the HSS on the rest to about 6°, (look at a cheap stationay set, it' not much of an angle), take a few passed as before, don't forget to keep it cool with the plastic beaker of water.

The above two grinding operations form clearance from the cylindrical work, meaning it won't rub and "chatter" (looking at the chuck from the tailstock), the second forms a clearance from the cut cylindrical piece of work, slightly angled away from the cutting point, again to prevent rub and chatter.

If your just planning on turning brass or Ali, this is as far as you need to go to get a tool ready for the lathe, oh apart from honing…come to that in a min.

If your turning steel then you'll need top rake, this is done by tilting your grinding rest at a slight upward angle, then placing the top surface of your tool (cutting point facing upward) 90° to the face of the grinder. Grind away until the red sparks crest the surface again, remembering to cool the tool in water ever few touches to the wheel. You should now have major clearances sorted for brass, Ali, and even steel or cast iron.

To finish you need to hone the tip, this is a small radius that is put onto the sharp point of all the grinds you have done, this is done by hand on an oil stone.

Oil the stone around a 5cm dribble of 3 in 1 will do, spread with your finger tip, and coat the tool tip with oil from the stone, hold the tool top surface 90° to the top surface of the stone, or slightly less to your first relief angle. Take a long (10cm) sweep over the oil stone rotating just your wrist. You should see a small round been added to the tool tip, the greater the round the smoother the finish, however the greater the round the harder it is to get a tight corner on relief work, (a rim on a flywheel for example).

Practice and learn these basics they'll help you loads in the future and save you a fortune in carbide tools, holders and tips.

If you plan to cut stainless, you'll need carbide unfortunately. HSS will blunt really quick, and you'll need high speeds.

All the best to you and your family from another rookie

sorry to hear of the fire damage, hopefully something(s) is/are recoverable….?

Here's the link for info on posting images…

**LINK**

Oh dear!

You lost a good mentor in your uncle, (as we all did) and now a lot of kit.

Having said that, as you now see, there is a LOT of experience and help available on here. So welcome aboard!

HSS will stand being knocked, (interrupted cuts and accidents) which Carbide won't. Carbide is at its best in a rigid machine, running at high speed, which is not really hobby machine territory, although many of use it.

My advice, FWITW, is to heat the shop with dry heat, rather than gas or solid fuel, and do allow some ventilation, (one vent set high and one set low to allow the damp air to exit)

If it is possible to insulate, do so, (polystyrene sheets fixed to the walls and ceiling?) Improves comfort and obviously reduces heat loss, and keeps cooler in the summer. (My wooden shop has 50mm of glass fibre on walls and ceiling, and is comfortable at all times)

From here the way is forward!

Howard

Workshop fire – nightmare!

Couple of people have mentioned carbide chipping. Certainly used to be true but improvements have been made. I was responsible for this catastrophic dig-in:

I did it with the smallest and sharpest carbide index I own, a non-ferrous CCGT 060204 in a 6mm holder:

As you can see the insert was undamaged by the smash.

It's worth remembering that HSS has been at the end of the line in terms of development for many years now. It's not going to get any better. Not so carbide which, being mainstream, has steadily improved since it was first introduced. It's still being actively developed and may be tougher than you think! I certainly work carbide MUCH harder than HSS; in my workshop it's HSS that gets mollycoddled.

Dave

Here we go again!

More tosh about carbide.

30 years ago, I bought a little Cowell's lathe and muddled on by with HSS (but, it has to be said, without a grinder and with tools dressed by hand when they blunted). I left one job in 1988 and, as part of my leaving pressy, was given a set of brazed carbide tools, a grinder and a green grit wheel for said tools. From the moment I started with the carbide tools, the quality of finish improved greatly. There is no way the Cowell's could be considered, either particularly rigid, or high speed (it wasn't the watchmakers one) and they worked fine. Some of those tools are still used today (but only very occasionally) and rarely did they need the services of the green grit wheel, or grinder.

Later on, I bought (still for the Cowell's) a set of 6mm indexable carbide tools, which used a triangular insert. Providing you don't throw then in your drawer when you put them away, they are reasonably robust. Ok, if you catch the tip against something hard, it will break, but usually, you get 3 goes at each one.

I now have a Myford S7 (reading this forum, again not considered either high speed or particularly rigid) and use carbide tips pretty much exclusively. At a couple of quid a pop (if you buy 10) they are still pretty good value. About the only thing I use HSS for is parting off.

I have made (to Mike Cox's design, but larger) a tangential toolholder and can understand why many people swear by them and use them as a "one tool for everything". If your lathe isn't equipped with a quick change toolholder, you might be better off trying a tangential tool – though the commercial one is very expensive.

From what I've read elsewhere on this forum, modern brazed tip tools can be of very suspect quality and I wouldn't recommend them to you. At least with indexable tools, should you end up with poor quality tips, you can try ones from another supplier or manufacturer. Carbide tooling meant for industrial machines will be unlikely to work well with a hobby machine – however that doesn't mean all carbide tooling should be dismissed out of hand.

Regards Tom

Edited By Tomfilery on 08/12/2017 16:50:40

Dave

Have you been sniffing the cellulose thinners again?

Nurse……….