Yesterday, I made a couple of new turning tools, a point tool, and a multi-purpose tool.
I used 10mm diameter by 200mm long high-speed steel bar stock purchased on eBay for the “working end”.
The first job was to turn a couple of handles. I used Elm for the handles, as this is what I had in the workshop.
I turned them between centres using the dreaded Skew Gouge. The skew gouge is often neglected because it can be a bit scary to use, being very prone to causing heart-stopping catches. When used correctly it provides an excellent finish straight off the tool requiring minimal sanding. I can’t pretend to have mastered the tool myself yet, and this was an ideal chance to get in a bit of practice. I was pretty pleased to get both handles turned with no problems.
I didn’t have any proprietary tool handle ferrules so had to make do with what I had to hand. I used a short piece of 20mm copper tube for one handle and a 20mm compression fitting nut for the other.
I drilled 10mm holes down the centre of each handle to a depth of 50mm to match the diameter of the bar stock.
Finally, the handles were finished with three coats of Shellac.
With the handles completed, I drove the bars into each handle. The nature of wood means that even drilled at 10mm the bars were still a tight fit.
Once blank tools were made it was time to sharpen the ends to my desired profiles.
To make a multi-purpose tool I sharpened each side at 25º to give an included angle of 50º this mutli-tool can be used in a similar fashion to a parting/beading tool as well as a skew tool.
.To make the point tool, I ground three facets, also at 25º with the three facets equally spaced around tool (120º
