Has anyone ever made a really good DIY Lathe Chisel?

[mgdesigns]

I am a new Shopsmith owner of a 1956 model Mark V, and really pretty poor right now. I've been doing a few parts purchases, and stopped by Woodcraft in Franklin, TN and asked about lathe chisels. They have very expensive long skew chisel that has to be at least 24" overall length. I don't have my lathe fully operational yet, and only own a 12" long half-round Buck Bros. bench chisel to start with. I saw the expensive one, and heard the schpeel about how you need the long handle to brace against your side of the belly to aid in control when turning bowls and the like.

Q: Has anyone here ever made a really good homemade chisel, suitable for turning bowls? I envision getting a 1/2" square bar of A1 tool steel about 16" long and using my water-cooled diamond grinding equipment (lapidary) to shape and sharpen the end, and finding an old wooden baseball bat to cut off and make the handle, but wondered if anyone has done similar tool making, and could share the wisdom.

[Ed in Tampa]

I have built a few lathe chisels out of old files.
First I grind off the file teeth then I fashion the tip I want.
I make sure I don't over heat the file and once I get the shape I want I usually use it to turn a handle for it. For safety I use a file handle on the tang until I get the handle I want fashioned.

Can't say the are super chisels but they serve their purpose.

[shipwright]

Good bowl chisels are fingernail grind profiles. This is not an easy profile to grind freehand certainly not from scratch. I have made them freehand from square ground gouges but wouldn't want to try making one from square stock. I think skews and a couple of simple scrapers would be easy enough and yes you can do bowls with flat scrapers but if you want to do nice bowls, for my money, you can't beat fingernail grinds. Unfortunately they are not only quite expensive to buy but for best results you really should have a wolverine or similar grinding jig to touch them up often.

That said a good enough craftsman can make some amazing stuff out of not much so if you think you're up to it, go for it. You certainly won't succeed if you don't try.

Paul M

[bettyt44720]

i have made my own "easy rougher" type tools (one with a square cutter and one with a round cutter) and a "termite" tool for hollowing. i bought the termite end from woodcraft and made the holder. $30 vs $100. google those to get an idea. i may have some pics on the other computer. i will check later.

[mgdesigns]

Thanks for the responses so far. If you would be so kind, please post photos of your favorite lathe chisels, with a brief description of how you use them, and how you may have made them.

The ones with removable, replaceable tungsten carbide cutters on the end seem particularly interesting to me. Sort of like machine shop technology brought down to the wood shop. I think that may be a way to go, but I'd like feedback from people who have already done this sort of thing. Thanks, again.

[bettyt44720]

as far as using basic lathe tools this page from your shopsmith bible (ptwfe) may be of some help.

[mgdesigns]

as far as using basic lathe tools this page from your shopsmith bible (ptwfe) may be of some help.
Sorry, but your link did not show up.

[beeg]

Here's the llink for the PTWFE, it's knot a full copy, but may due.

http://www.shopsmith.com/academy/introduction.htm