Making tool rests

Most turners make do with a limited number of tool rest because of the expense.  Once you start making your own you discover the proper tool rest can make life a lot easier.  Actually it is not a difficult or expensive venture.   It is not necessary to have a welder as you can take the pieces to a welding shop or muffler shop and they will do it at a reasonable price.    Since I do professional turning I often need special fixtures and tool rests so I used these needs as an excuse to take a welding course at the local junior college for $60 and buy a very nice stick welder from a neighbor for $200.  After the wife spent $1500 at the vet I bought a Lincoln 195 MIG welder as a consolation prize.  Now I wonder how I lived without a welder.  With all the different tool rests I have made over the last four years even with buying the welders it is cheaper than having them made.

Materials

Cold rolled steel is used for posts and top edge of tool rest.  Cold roll is much harder than hot rolled.  While not as hard as high speed steel it is a lot cheaper and easier to find.  Cold roll is very hard to ding and after several years of rough use my older tool rests are still in great shape. I get one each,  20' pieces of 1" cold roll, 3/16" cold roll and 1/8" by 2" hot rolled for about $40. 

This is my DeWalt 14" cut off saw which is used to cut steel.  You can buy a decent quality cut off saw at Lowes or Home Depot for about $60.  If you are really a masochist then you can always use a hacksaw.   It is one of those tools that all of a sudden you have all sort of uses for now that it is available. 

This tool rest is made with 1" cold roll for the post,  3/16" cold roll for top of tool body and 1/8" by 2" for body.  The picture above is side toward the stock.  

This is the side toward the turner.  When the post is welded to the body the tip of the post is 1/16" off the body.  This results in the top of the body leaning toward the stock.  This will let you get the pivot point of the cutting tool within 1/4" of it's tip and for shear cutting the end of the gouge can be dropped down so the angle of cut is greater than 60 degrees.   This type of tool rest can't be longer than 12" because it will start to vibrate.  Over 12" use 1/4" by 2 for the body but even the 1/4" will start to vibrate at 18".

This tool rest body is made from 1" square stock.  The 3/8" cold rolled is welded on the corner again allowing the pivot point to be within 1/2" of the tool tip.  However the gouge can't get much above 90 degrees because the body is so thick.  This type of tool rest is very solid and can be up to 24" long before it starts to vibrate.  It has been my experience that 12" is the maximum length from post to end of tool rest for a single post tool rest.  Over 12" the banjo can't keep it from rotating.   The piece under the body shows a cross section of the tool rest body.

This is a 90 degree tool rest from 1" cold rolled as seen from top.  This is great for turning boxes as you have a tool rest on side and end without having to reposition the tool rest.

Setup to MIG weld 90 degree tool rest.  Clamped at a 90 degrees on a flat surface I use the MIG welder to tack the 2 pieces together and then use the stick welder to finish welding the pieces.  My MIG welder will only properly weld up to 1/4" thick steel.   The 2 pieces actually are not cut at 45 degrees, probably 43 and 47.  This gives a gap between them allowing the weld to be deeper.  After welding and grinding down the weld I manually hold the post in place and use a tack weld to hold it and then use the square to get it aligned correctly before welding 

These are some of my tool rests made from 1" cold roll stock.   The curved ones were bent by a friend using a 50  ton press.  Two of the shorter 2 post tool rests are shown but I have them up to 5' long. 

The latest style.  This is my favorite style.  Light weight, strong, vibration free, comfortable to use with over hand or under hand and solves several manufacturing problems.  The cold roll on top of the body was actually welded should have been welded on the stock side.

Tool rest don't have to be massive or heavy.  This one was made to do some 24" spindles.  I used 1" square hollow stock. 2" by 1/8" caped with 1/8" cold rolled round stock.  It works great without any vibration.  This rest and the 10" long one made from 1 2" angle iron are my favorites.

Finish turning a 8' baseball bat.  I am using an over hand grip  My left hand rides along the square stock of tool rest and the butt of tool is against my leg for better control.  My right hand did not get back on the skew before the camera went off.  

12" inside diameter tool rest made for the thirty two 12" balls.  Nice to know some one that has a CNC plasma cutter  Used 1/8" stock for the horizontal curved piece and 1/4" by 2" stock for the tool bearing surface.  

Training wheels for tool rest.  Doing some fine detail work and decided to try this.  Actually works out nice.  Especial great in situations where you definitely don't want to come off end off tool rest.

Robust Tools tool rest

For some reason Robust picked me to test their tool rest.  Robust is a new company and builds what appears to meet or exceeded the Oneway standard.  All I really know about them is what I read on their site, http://www.turnrobust.com/ .   They apologized about the finish on the prototype they sent but it was better than most of the commercial rests I have seen.  As you have seen from my tool rests, pretty is not high on my list.  The body is from 1/4" steel  and has a straight bend.  The production models will be a smooth curve.  The body is topped off with 1/4" drill rod.  Drill rod is extremely hard and is an excellent choose.  Welding the rod to the body is hard to do without warping the rod.  A non welding solution is needed.  Now for the interesting part.  The drill rod is epoxied to the body.  Epoxy is commonly used to bond metal to metal with excellent results and should have plenty strength for this application.   I like it enough that I ordered a dual post 20" version.

This rest is better than the ones I have making for myself and I have to give it a solid 9.5 .  The only negative is the unknown about the epoxy.  After 11 months of heavy use the tool rest is still in great shape.  In my opinion this is the best tool rest you can get.  Also a warning, the drill rod is so hard and smooth that the tools slides much easier than you are used to and this takes a little period of adjustment.