Anybody interested in making bits for wood turning tools?

I’m a beginning wood turner and want to have some scrapers of my own. I watched a video about home-made scrapers since they’re so expensive. The assembly process doesn’t seem that tough for a guy like me. It’s just the shaping of the tool bits that I’m afraid of screwing up. I have attached the video below and would like to have all four of these bits made.

I’d be more than willing to exchange this work for some projects done on a lathe. I can do some basic stuff at this point. Smaller bowls and spindle work are all I can handle at this point. As I get better, the catalog will improve.

If anybody is interested in this exchange of these bits for some wood projects, let me know.

Most modern first world lathe tools are made with high speed steel. It really isn’t viable to machine HSS yourself, and certainly not with the tools in the machine shop.

So you will be left with using high carbon steel. This is certainly viable, but if you have not used such tools before you should be aware that you will need to sharpen these tools much more often, perhaps 3-4 times on a single large project…

If you want some experience using high carbon steel tools, we used to have several in the woodshop (cheap chinese made tools), which can give you a feel for the difference in performance before you put much effort into making them.

Another great source for forging these type of tools is

High carbon tools work fantastic for hand woodworking, but the additional heat and friction they experience with wood turning can disappoint people who are used to the magical nature of high speed steel.

EDIT: I just watched the video you provided and realized he is ‘making’ tool holders not tools and relying on HSS inserts. So what I wrote above doesn’t apply to this approach.

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This is the first video and it shows the steel insert. I think I copied it at the exact spot.

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When I started out I made a lot of my own scrapers from tool bits I bought from KBC tools. Mostly made wooden handles though and epoxied them in. I still use some of them today. This would be a good group project if you can get the interest going.

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