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Easy Wood replacement cutters

P

Paul Durden

Joined
Feb 2, 2025
Messages
24
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Location
Panama City, FL USA
What is your preference for replacement cutters?
1. Use only genuine OEM from Easy Wood
2. Reputable 3rd party like Arizona Carbides- I’ve used them before and was satisfied.
3. Some of the Chinesium sub-$3 each replacement cutters on Amazon and EBay.
They will all wear eventually and need to be rotated and/or eventually touched up with a diamond plate on the flat side. I do have some negative rake cutters, but don’t see any way to refresh those when dulled, and I’ve stuck with OEM on those. They are patented but I’m sure there are knockoffs (intellectual property theft, if you will) I’m just trying to think about the sweet spot between cost and value. Thoughts and suggestions appreciated. Thx
 
Paul Durden said:
What is your preference for replacement cutters?
1. Use only genuine OEM from Easy Wood
2. Reputable 3rd party like Arizona Carbides- I’ve used them before and was satisfied.
3. Some of the Chinesium sub-$3 each replacement cutters on Amazon and EBay.
Click to expand...

Personally, I'd be concerned with catastrophic failures with the Chinesium (great word) parts. Micro fissures maybe or some other quality issue that results in part of a cutter being launched off the tip.
 
Mark Hepburn said:
Personally, I'd be concerned with catastrophic failures with the Chinesium (great word) parts. Micro fissures maybe or some other quality issue that results in part of a cutter being launched off the tip.
Click to expand...
A good point. Trying to turn with one remaining eye would be far worse than paying the price difference. :)
 
Mark Jundanian said:
I also buy most of my inserts from AZ Carbide. If they don't carry something I will buy OEM.

By the way, AZ is located in Michigan. I think the AZ refers to A to Z, but I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I always assumed Arizona, but as you say, upon inspection my last order from him (Ron @ AZ carbides) came from Michigan. Not sure if it's the connection, but he does seem to spend quite a bit of time in Arizona: 1757373763923.png
 
AZ Carbides was originally in Arizona, founder's name escapes me. When Ron Campbell bought the company several years ago, he migrated the business to Michigan but kept the name Good guy.
 
I’ve been buying carbide inserts for my metal turning lathe for many years. More recently for wood turning. All of the inserts that I’ve bought over the past ten years have come from eBay, and more recently Amazon. I was paying about £2 an insert years ago but I’m generally not paying more than about £1 an insert at the moment. I’ve been eyeing some on Temu recently for my metal lathe at about 45p each. So far, none of the inserts I’ve bought have failed to do the job.
Some people insist that some of the inserts aimed at wood turners are in some way special, in order to justify the high price. I personally doubt that’s the case but be all have our beliefs I guess. If you actually look into the specification for some of the inserts it’s clear they were never originally intended for cutting wood in spite of the fact that they do, and rather well.
 
Interested in hearing experiences with sharpening carbide inserts. I have sharpened Easy Wood and AZ inserts on a diamond stone. Believe I have seen some restoration of sharpness but not as “good as new”

Also have tried the half price inserts on Amazon and have experienced the total failures as feared by Paul and Mark earlier in this discussion. Luckily the pieces went down below the tool rest. These Chinese inserts did come in a very nice storage box with a sliding top. Also the mounting holes are very slightly oversized which could also have contributed to the failures. The screws that come with the Chinese inserts are larger than the EW and AZ screws so the ones I received are for a different mounting style/size than the EW or AZ inserts
 
When I’ve sharpened flat carbide inserts on a 600g Diamond hone they’ve ended up just as sharp as when they were new. In many if not most cases you can also sharpen them several times.

Mounting screws is an interesting point. If you look at carbide inserts used on metal lathes they are invariably mounted with Torx screws. Also, some of the flat inserts offered for wood turning seem to come from planer heads, these too are normally fixed with Torx screws as well. I was therefore quite surprised when I first saw Easywood Tools to see they use Hex screws. It’s very easy to round either the socket in the crew or the hex wrench in the smaller sizes. I’ve never had this problem with Torx screws. It seems it’s been enough of an issue that Easywood published a document on the problem:


It’s also worth pointing out that there are more than one head size for each screw type. I’ve used this supplier to obtain the correct size screws for carbide inserts:

www.ridethebevel.co.uk

Torx Head Screws for use Carbide Replacement Cutters

Screws
www.ridethebevel.co.uk www.ridethebevel.co.uk
 
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