EWT Carbide-Tipped Lathe Chisel Product Review

Now I've had the opportunity to test drive these Easy Wood tools and I really like the road that that test drive took me down. Let me walk you through what we've got going here. These are different from lathe chisel that you might be used to. What I've got here is actually a set-up that is a tool holder, that's the bar right here, and at the tip of that holder is a carbide cutter. Same on all three of these, different shapes. With a carbide cutter, instead of sharpening what we would do is spin this one to the other side, when this side gets dull. When both sides are dull I'm simply gonna replace the cutter altogether. The cutters run about 15 bucks. So I did a bunch of turning in the last week, what I really like about this is that I finally realized I'm spending lots of time turning, lots of time making chips, not having to go back to my grinder because these don't need to be sharpened. They just simply get turned to a new spot and because they're carbide they last a really really long time. I would say the cutting capability on these outlast what I'm used to with my high-speed steel chisels. The three shapes that I've got here, which are a detailer, a rougher, and a finisher, are available in different sizes, so you can get 'em in a scale for the work that your doin'. I love these big ones for big bowls like I'm doing here. The smaller chisel's are more suitable for finer work like pens or other spindle work. Speaking of pens and spindle work you can use these for bowl work, and for spindle work, work equally well either way. I really like the big square one for turning a tenon on the end of a spindle part like you might do on a chair leg or something like that. So I know that what you really want to know is where the rubber meets the road, which is cut quality off of these. So I'm gonna change bowls here. I'm gonna get a new blank on and show ya just how well this finishing tool cuts. Before I do a cut here, let me talk a little bit more about just the way the tools themselves are made up. The steel here is really robust. Now, of course, you never want to cantilever past the tool rest any further than you have to but sometimes reaching deeply into a bowl, you do end up projected out there. Nice heavy steel, found very little chatter coming off of that. I also like the way the handles have been turned. You really got a two-position grip here. Sometimes I'm choking up on this for a cut, sometimes for leverage, I wanna be back here. So EWT automatically just built that into the tool itself, gave me that two-position handle. Now on the lathe, I've got a piece of kiln-dried cherry and I'm gonna make a couple different cuts on this. I'll show you the rougher first. The rougher is the square-tipped chisel. The deflector on here keeps stuff going away from ya, just like the name says, instead of towards ya. So I'll do some roughing cuts so you can see how the chips fly then we'll go back and do some finishing cuts so you can see the cut quality. The rougher's letting me get material out of there real quickly. Now let's have a look at the quality that you can get off that finisher. Your approach to this is basically similar to what you would do with the scraper, keep the tool about parallel to the floor. I want that cutter on the center of the turning itself. Let's have a look now, see what we got out of this. Pretty smooth finish inside here. Now the lighter the pass you take the easier it's gonna be to clean up that interior cut. Just like with any lathe chisel. They work equally well on the face grain cut, like I'm makin' here, and also on end grain cuts like you might do if you were hollowing a vessel out. So, real happy with the performance I got out of this, I really like the way that I bought me extra time at the lathe. Very happy with the carbide tip cutters from EWT.