@William Rogers , I haven't forgotten about explaining myself with my statements regarding tool steels......but, for now, I have other obligations to attend to. Hope to get back to you on that a little later on today......
I have no doubts that in dry wood turning with a more acute edge and a finer grit leaves a cleaner cut.
Absolutely,
@john lucas , and your statement applies more to bowl turning than any other type of turning, specifically because bowl turning has the unique problematic physical aspects of requiring the cut to alternate between long grain and end grain, both for interior and exterior applications.
@William Rogers , Many of the modern premium tool steels are marketed with the promise of edge holding ability.....
the cutting edge will simply last longer. Who wouldn't want that....right?
While I would agree that the edge does indeed last longer, I've come to an alternative POV on the usefulness of the above (in bold) proposition, as applied to the value it has in the act of woodturning. Let's consider this for the moment: After a tool is sharpened, it's at the most acute level of sharpness during it's entire useful life-span while turning. This initial starting point is the point where, if all other pieces of the puzzle are at the optimum, will leave the cleanest cut with the least tear-out, requiring the least amount of sanding that is possible.
THIS, the elimination of the need for aggressive sanding, is what we all strive to achieve, but it's a very high bar......and, as stated, sharpness is only one small piece of the overall puzzle required to achieve that goal.
Now, let's consider the entire useful life-span of a sharpened tool. When freshly sharpened, it's at it's sharpest. At the end of that life-span, it's at it's least acceptable level of sharpness. There is a difference between the extremes in that life-span, and that difference is the ability to leave the cleanest possible surface under the worst of circumstances.....Bone dry, hard, dense, directly opposed end-grain, and very resistant to cutting cleanly.
Since the more modern tool steels are much harder, and resistant to dulling, they will cut cleanly at the beginning of their edge life-span, and at an acceptable level of clean cutting ability at the end of that life span. Still, that sounds great, doesn't it? Well, it is.......until you consider the end of that life-span will linger, and last a long time before the turner decides to re-sharpen......now,
that is the problem right there......that lingering for a long time before the turner's senses tells him he needs to re-sharpen. Because of that, the turner will stay in that zone of not quite-as-sharp-as-it-could-be......and specifically because of that, he continues at the lathe for far longer with a tool that is what he has, but isn't as good as he needs it to be. (ala: robo)
For a long long time, the standard was carbon steel. In the very beginning, I bought a cheap set of carbon steel turning tools, and I still have one or two of them stashed away somewhere. What I can tell you, is you can get just as sharp an edge with carbon steel, as you can with the modern techno-advanced steels available to us these days. The difference between the old fashioned carbon steel tools, and the modern hybrid steels, is the length of time they will stay "in the zone". These days, my preferred tool steel is M2 HSS. It will stay in the zone longer than carbon steel, but not nearly as long as the more modern steels. This is a great advantage because it dulls much quicker than the hybrid steels, and slower than the old carbon steel tools.....thus, still giving the much needed early indication of where in the zone you are.....and that faster pace of the "early warning" is much more perceptive to our humanly senses than the hybrid steels can provide for our evaluation. (The term "perceptive" here, is one more thing that requires some level of "spiritual" involvement to function at the highest level of outcome any one individual can achieve.....and we, as a group, are not all the same in that regard!)
The hybrid steels are like boiling the frog......the rate at which they will dull, is such a slow process that the turner doesn't realize he'd be better off to re-sharpen long after it would have been prudent to do so.......even though he's still technically "in the zone"!
-----odie-----