What's the trick to using carbide?

[Woodchipper]

Nice pen and have a good holiday!

 

[mecompco]

That came out awesome!

FWIW, I have quite literally not touched my HSS tools since I was lucky enough to win a Magical Skew (loser train ;-). I only use the R2 cutter, start to finish (the square will catch easily, and the round is too aggressive, IMHO). Depending on the plastic blank, I can usually get a finish from it that requires minimal sanding--sometimes none. It does take some experimenting. I'm usually just slightly below center and I tend to keep the handle up. I also switch between the angled cut and flat scraping. I run the lathe at full speed all the time.

I appreciate quality, sharp, HSS tools, but for me, the MS is the answer for pen turning--it at least tripled my output with equal quality. Of course, YMMV.

 

[sbwertz]

I would probably have resorted to the "80 grit gouge." I had to do this when I was first doing stone inlay. I didn't have carbide tools, so I did my basic shaping with coarse sandpaper wrapped around a small piece of wood. Then went to successively finer grits, cross sanding between grits, and finally to micromesh. It was slow, but you NEVER get a catch LOL. I used a piece of wood about 1 1/2 inches wide and a quarter inch thick.

Never tried it on plastic, but it works well on wood with a lot of turquoise inlay, which will eat HHS.