Carbide knife
- Thread starter chipperd
- Start date
> The ones from HF are almost always dull,easily fixed with a bench grinder and a green wheel.
You're not going to find very many that are ready to use out of the box,especially as sharp as they need to be for wood,leather and phenolic. For metal,however,good carbide lathe tooling can be used as soon as you cut the protective rubber off them.
For facing ferrules,a good quality HSS blank with 10% cobalt,properly ground,will be just as effective as carbide,with the exception of you cutting abrasive ferrule materials such as Ivorine 4. For that you need carbide,and SHARP carbide as well.
The best carbide cutting tools I can recommend,without going to the more expensive indexable type,are Micro 100 brand. They can be had in 1/4-3/4 shank sizes,and ordered from Travers,MSC,and any tooling supplier that caters to true machinists. They're not cheap though,the 3/8 shank AR cutters I have were about 12 bucks EACH,as opposed to the imports that can be ordered from Enco at 15 per box.
The Micros can be ordered in a wide range of shapes,for custom grinds,but it sounds like the ones you need are the AR style.
Be careful not to overheat when grinding them to shape or sharpening,and a diamond grit stone or wheel after the green wheel gets the best results for sharpness.
A sharp point works best in most cases for cue work,but won't last long if cutting metals. In those cases,a slight flat at the tip,or a tiny radius gets the best results. Tommy D.
You're not going to find very many that are ready to use out of the box,especially as sharp as they need to be for wood,leather and phenolic. For metal,however,good carbide lathe tooling can be used as soon as you cut the protective rubber off them.
For facing ferrules,a good quality HSS blank with 10% cobalt,properly ground,will be just as effective as carbide,with the exception of you cutting abrasive ferrule materials such as Ivorine 4. For that you need carbide,and SHARP carbide as well.
The best carbide cutting tools I can recommend,without going to the more expensive indexable type,are Micro 100 brand. They can be had in 1/4-3/4 shank sizes,and ordered from Travers,MSC,and any tooling supplier that caters to true machinists. They're not cheap though,the 3/8 shank AR cutters I have were about 12 bucks EACH,as opposed to the imports that can be ordered from Enco at 15 per box.
The Micros can be ordered in a wide range of shapes,for custom grinds,but it sounds like the ones you need are the AR style.
Be careful not to overheat when grinding them to shape or sharpening,and a diamond grit stone or wheel after the green wheel gets the best results for sharpness.
A sharp point works best in most cases for cue work,but won't last long if cutting metals. In those cases,a slight flat at the tip,or a tiny radius gets the best results. Tommy D.