How good are D-Way Tools?

[Ralph Lindberg]

Really good

I needed a taller tool post for my McNaughton Coring gate. Not real tough, just a piece of 1-inch mild steel rod, with section about 1-1/2 inches long turned down to ¾ of an inch.

I don’t have a metal lathe, but I do have a 3-jaw machinist chuck that fits on one of the lathes and some of Dave’s M42 tools.

Well, M42 is used to machine steel….

It took some playing around to find which of the tools I have cut the best. With the approach angle I was using the best tool was the Bottom Feeder gouge. I found this tool, riding the bevel, produced the biggest chips. I also found that the edge lasted about as long (cutting time) as this same edge does turning a bowl.

Now hand turning steel does not produce a finish as nice as you will get from a regular machinist lathe, but with a little time with a file produces an acceptable finish for my needs.
This is also not something I could recommend for the novice turner, maintaining a constant approach angle is critical

But the really impressive part was how well the D-Way tools cut mild steel.

(Yes Dave is an old friend of mine)

[John K Jordan]

But the really impressive part was how well the D-Way tools cut mild steel.

That's good to know. I used Thompson tools to turn steel on the wood lathes. Slow but worked. (Brass and aluminum are a lot easier!)

Machinists have used "gravers" freehand for ages to shape steel. Gravers look like scrapers to me.

JKJ

[Mark Greenbaum]

John:

The gravers I use for Hand Engraving are serious gouges, not scrapers. If they had a groove, they'd be miniature bowl gouges, or V-gouges. Just my 2 cents worth.

[John K Jordan]

John:
The gravers I use for Hand Engraving are serious gouges, not scrapers. If they had a groove, they'd be miniature bowl gouges, or V-gouges. Just my 2 cents worth.

Thanks! The only ones I've seen in action were at the lathe on the amazing Clickspring videos. He's turning brass here but I think he turned hardened steel in another video:

graver_clickspring.jpg

The videos are incredible, especially for anyone interested in machining. There are over 20 extremely well made videos, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Y146v8HxE
to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ZGlpDa-0g

(Be sure to look at the "show more" in the text section on Youtube - he even puts a transcript there plus links to other fascinating things he's doing.)

One interesting thing is where he commented that turning freehand was a lot of fun! duh

Hey, do you have photos here or somewhere of your hand engraving? I'd love to see it.

JKJ

[Reed Gray]

Some where, I don't remember exactly, but there was some thing up about pallet cutting bandsaw blades, which need to go through all sorts of screws and nails. The teeth were M42 HSS..... Good stuff...

robo hippy

[Brice Rogers]

Two years ago I machined my Griz G0766 tool rest so that I could place it in a lower position. That required removing about 1/2 inch of shoulder from the fat end of the tool rest. Because it was 14" wide, I wouldn't fit on my 12" swing metal lathe. So I turned it of the Griz. From the resulting whisker shavings that I got, I believe the tool rest was made of cast steel rather than cast iron. The whiskers were like hypodermic insulin needles. I ended up having to wear a pair of rubber gloves as the needles were embedding themselves in my fingers. I used a "cemented" carbide scraper (for a metal lathe) on the end of a 1/2" square bar. I found it important to put a collar on the bar to limit the depth of cut. Also, I removed the metal in lateral increments of perhaps 1/10". And I was making my depth of cut around 0.010 to 0.020 (by eye, so it is a guess). Otherwise, without the collar, I found that I could take too aggressive of a cut. The process worked fine, but it was scary removing material so close to the wings of the tool rest. It sounded like a helicopter propeller.

[Mark Greenbaum]

Hey, do you have photos here or somewhere of your hand engraving? I'd love to see it.

JKJ

John: try looking at my website: mgdesigns1.us

[Peter Blair]

The tools I have bought from Dave at D-Way are great. I use his beading set regularly and his arm-rest hollower is my go to for quick smallish hollow forms. I like it so much I plan to use similar shaped scrapers for my other hollowing tools, gets the smoothest finish inside a form as anything else I have.

[John K Jordan]

John: try looking at my website: mgdesigns1.us

Very nice. It is refreshing to see hand engraving in a computer perfect laser engraved world!

I liked the jewelry, the groomsmen hatchets, the memorial plaques. I'll save the link - I might want to hire you for an engraving.

Seeing the price list with engraving on the inside of a ring made me think of a gold ring I found that appeared hand engraved on the inside. I found it with an underwater metal detector in the sand 30' down in Ginnie Springs in Florida. Through the engraving I was able to track down the owner and return the ring to his wife. She was so excited - he had lost it on their honeymoon one year before and had just bought a replacement but this one had sentimental value. She said she was going to put it through his nose - wonder what she meant by that...

JKJ

[Mark Greenbaum]

Reminds me of a couple of things: the old Savoy Brown song " Ring in his nose, and a ring on her hand". When I worked in the jewelry business, we had a newly wed couple who went to Hawaii for honeymoon, and her 2 carat diamond engagement ring slid off into the ocean, and sank down a hundred feet. The husband hired a diver and retrieved the ring. When they got back, I sized it down a half size so that would not happen again.

I do use the computer to do my artwork layouts, and transfer via acetone/laser prints, or secret sauce and transparencies. That way my clients pretty much can get what they see in my proposals.

[John K Jordan]

Relative to the OPs topic, do you engrave steel by hand? If so, what kind of steel are the tools?

I understand the Dway tools are M42 and Thompson's are 10V. I don't have any Dway but I just got some Carter&Son (and daughter) M42 tools I might compare. I haven't tried to turn steel on the wood lathe with any of the standard HSS although I use HSS bits on my metal-turning lathes.

(Yikes, I can't imagine recovering something from 100 ft down - maybe the bottom was clean, flat sand and he spotted the sparkle/glint with a light. I recovered a fishing rod and reel a guy knocked off his houseboat in a lake and it had drifted at least 30' in 50' of water.)

JKJ

[Mark Greenbaum]

Hand Engraving on steel,cast iron, titanium, or aluminum, I always start with my favorite HSS, but if I can't get the depth of cut I need I switch to Tungsten Carbide, sometimes Carbalt. I do not do push engraving like traditional jewelers, nor do I use Hammer & Chisel. I use the GRS air assisted GraverMax system, but it is still hand engraving. The air assist is like a miniature jack hammer with up to 4000 hits per minute, and that allows me to easily cut through almost anything. I don't do glass (I could, I just don't want to), or bricks (that's acid-etching), or leather (that's stamping and tooling).

[Ralph Lindberg]

...I ended up having to wear a pair of rubber gloves as the needles were embedding themselves in my fingers......

I did the same thing, for the same reason, the thin disposable gloves,

[Ralph Lindberg]

John:

The gravers I use for Hand Engraving are serious gouges, not scrapers. If they had a groove, they'd be miniature bowl gouges, or V-gouges. Just my 2 cents worth.

One of my friends hand engraves dies for striking coins. He uses HSS tools as the steel he engraves is moderately hard