Cheap Tools- Beware

[Bruce Platt]

As a beginner turner I took some of the advice here to not spend too much so you can learn to sharpen properly with out wasting too much money. I got a set of chineese made chisels, ok they were very cheap. The picture below shows what can happen! Glad I was wearing a face shield. Be Safe Always







Bruce

[Doug Jones]

Sure glad no serious injury came from this,,,

For a good cheap set I recommend the set from Harbor Freight. Even after your skills develope you will still be using some of these tools.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=47066

[kwgeorge]

Bruce, sorry you had some trouble. Where did you get that tool I don’t recognize the handle and for a roughing gouge it looks very thin and the edges don’t look very finished. What you experienced though is not limited to cheap tools by no means. A thread over at the AAW main site was started by a guy that snapped his 1-1/4” Sorby roughing gouge.

http://www.woodturner.org/vbforum/showthread.php?t=798

I think I would examine carefully what happened that could have caused this. Potentially you could have had the toolrest too far away from the work piece. Anytime something like what you show happens to me or someone else I always try to figure out what could have caused this to happen so I can avoid it next time.

Be safe.

[Bruce Platt]

I wish I knew I did something wrong. But the tool rest was close the thing just snapped. After many years as a metallurgist ( my real profession) I can say that this was a brittle failure caused by a flaw in the casting. While I got these tools off ebay, the only marking on the box says made in china. The chisels are identical to the starter pen turning set I got from Penn State last year.

I think I will stay with HSS tools from now on. They are cheaper than a new eye.

Bruce

[tribalwind]

wow, did that happen from a catch on the lathe?. what were u turning and what kind/size wood? were you roughing a piece out?
if its identical to a penturning set,id say it's WAY too small for anything BUT. i also have a cheesey set from ebay that are very small,kinda similar handle,id definitely not use it for anything but a pen or bottle-stopper.(or maybe one of ken's ultra tiny beautiful boxes,if i actually had that capability!)

the harbor-freight ones mentioned are HSS,good bargain.
did it hit the face-sheild? man sure am glad you're OK !

[gerti]

WRT the HF HSS chisels: They are great to learn with, and a great value at that. But at least mine do not hold their edge well. One by one I replaced them with better quality tools (Sorby, Taylor, Hamlet), and each of the new tools amazed me! Of course each of tem cost more than the entire HF set together! The HF tools will one by one be reground for specialty purposes. Still a great buy though and I would buy them again.

Gerd

[Jim Ketron]

I started out with the HF set and still use some of them. I think its a great starter set to begin with, and they are HSS.

[Jim Boyd]

I got a HF set and I had one bend pretty bad but it didn't break. They were not the HSS set but the cheapy set in the store. I did have a bad catch[:X]

[Bruce Platt]

I was roughing out a bowl, I always cut my blanks nearly round on the bandsaw first, no catch just came flying off. Put a nick in the face shield.

Bruce