When I arrived at the turning seminar, we were handed 8-inch bowl blanks and assigned a workstation, which consisted of a small Jet lathe, a screw chuck, four jaw chuck, and three carbide turning tools. I was a bit disappointed not to see a traditional bowl gouge, but what did I know at that time.

Carlicia is the Marketing Automation Manager at MISUMI. She holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and a master's degree in Energy Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate, Marketo Certified Expert, and is passionate about education and training.

Think of carbide tools as the “gateway” to more serious turning. If you get hooked on turning with carbide, perhaps slowly work up to HSS tools and learn them and their advantages one at a time.

Thank you! I have both. I am learning. Using the bowl gouge is my weak point; just can’t seem to get the hang of it. After watching oodles of how-to-videos, I’m still struggling. Somewhat better with the newer carbide tools.

I’ve been turning for many years, on a variety of lathes, with a huge variety of scrapers. Starting ‘poor’ and BLESSED with a barn full of tool steel I found myself making many of my own scrapers, many of which I still use today. I love Robert Sorby tools, now that I have the funds to buy them. As far as the carbide vs traditional debate goes…. use whatever cuts well and safely. I now use a PowerMatic 2020 short bed, and that thing will rip your arms off in the blink of an eye, so your tools must fit the job. There is a reason a barber uses a leather strop to put the polish to his blade and you should do the same to your tools before you start. Sharpness is the key to fine work, and a fine craftsman. You never know what surprises a log has in store for you; sharp tools and a soft touch will keep you out of trouble, and allow the wood to shine.

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In this article, we will unpack all the pros and cons of carbide and HSS turning tools so you can better understand which tools might be best for you.

Candice, Carbide tools work well with green wood. Give it a go and see what you think. All the best to you. Happy Turning! Kent

How important is the gap between the coupling hubs. If recommended gap is 3.2mm and coupling is installed with 10mm hub gap, what will be the implications on alignment and lifespan of the coupling

Also, carbide tips do wear out and are expensive to replace. They can be sharpened on a diamond stone to lengthen their use, but eventually will need to be replaced.

ISOTolerance Chart

Traditional HSS tools require sharpening often. Depending on the wood being turned, traditional tools may need to be sharpened every few minutes. And this sharpening requires a dedicated sharpening station.

I mostly turn hardwood bowls (small/medium size), and mostly dried logs/blanks. For this type of work, what flute shape do you recommend for bowl gouges and/or works best with your sharpening technique, if it matters ?

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Carbide tools are ready to use out of the box. The razor-sharp edge of a carbide tool stays sharp for a very long time and requires no sharpening station, unlike a traditional bowl gouge.

As for traditionalists being down on carbide tools, that reminds me of the beginnings of digital photography. No self respecting advanced or professional photographer would touch one. Now, 10-15 years later….well you know the rest.

Bowl blank material can be removed quickly with a carbide turning tool, and catches are less frequent than HSS tools. Shaping a bowl blank goes pretty quick with a carbide turning tool.

It seems like even the most basic engineering design decisions can be exceedingly difficult and complex. Almost every mechanical system involves some sort of hole/shaft joint, and an innumerable amount of diverse fits may be specified depending on each unique machine application.  Fortunately, equipped with the proper tools and armed with knowledge about standardized shaft and hole tolerances, the designer can build anything from interference fits for alignment pin setups to running clearance fits for journal bearing applications.

Out of nowhere, a guy (I won’t mention names) made a snarky remark about whether I planned to use expensive carbide tools or not. I just shrugged it off and didn’t bother telling him about my first carbide turned bowl.

If one side of a carbide cutting tip wears out, depending on the cutter shape, the tip can be rotated to a new fresh sharp area.

Tolerance fit chartmetric

The entire bowl gouge is presented at an angle to the bowl blank. And the physics of the bowl gouge tip present the bowl gouge bevel at yet another angle.

I normally use conventional HSS tools for bowl turning and limit carbide use to hollowing jobs. Once again though you have suggested carbide is more expensive when it simply isn’t. The set you linked to contains a “detail” tool which isn’t needed for turning a bowl. You can in fact turn a bowl, inside and out with a single tool that costs less than a conventional bowl gouge.

The carbide turning tool school of thought is that carbide is the best thing since sliced bread. Carbide tools require no sharpening or steep learning curve. The carbide tips stay sharp longer than HSS. And carbide turners don’t mind sanding the wood surface a bit more when finished turning.

The most significant disadvantage of carbide tools is the fact they are scrapers. Carbide tools are introduced to the wood at a 90° angle. This steep impactful angle scrapes and tears out wood fibers violently, even with a sharp edge. When turning wood bowls, this is primarily a problem in the trouble zone areas.

There are a couple of errors in the article. The first one is cost of Carbide compared to Conventional tools. Whilst you can no doubt pay more for carbide tools many of them are much cheaper than HSS. Indeed, lots of folks have made their own which reduces the cost to a fraction of HSS tools. The second is cut versus scrape. Yes flat carbide does scrape in the same way as a traditional HSS scraper does. There are other carbide inserts thought that are not flat and don’t scrape. Whilst they may not produce the long strings of wood that say a bowl gouge does they still cut the wood. We could also differ on quality of finish. If used in shear mode you can get a good finish with carbide. I’ve also seen a poor finish made with HSS.

Presenting a traditional HSS bowl gouge at the correct angle with the right motions can take a good deal of time to master. Think of it like learning to ride a bike or play a musical instrument.

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Thanks for all the sound advice Kent. I’m aware that Robert Sorby now have multiple choice of cutters for the Turnmaster. Carbide, Hss and Hss with titanium coating . Would be great if you could do a YouTube review in the near future.

In all my research, I’d seen traditional, and carbide tools in use, and the long curly shavings created with a conventional HSS bowl gouge seemed so dreamy.

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Hi Kent – I just signed up for your sharpening class, but in a moment of “senioritis”, I accidentally purchased the sharpening class twice. I’ve requested a refund via PayPal, but I wanted to make you aware. Please assist with the refune.

Maybe off on a tangent but I started routing with hss bits. I replaced them often. I tried carbide bits and never went back to hss bits. Seems since my routing and sawing projects have been easier with carbide tools, then if i buy a wood lathe, I’d buy carbide turning tools.

That all seems fine and good and would be if the shape and performance of the tools were equal. However, they are not. The perpendicular scraping action of the carbide tools does not leave a final surface as smooth as a HSS bowl gouge does. Perhaps, we’ll see carbide bowl gouges in the future. Then it will be the best of both worlds.

Hole and Shafttolerance Chart

It was when I first chatted with the guys there that I immediately learned the bias of traditional tools compared to carbide.

These number fit classifications are the key that unlocks the design tolerances of the fit.  Each hole and shaft designation carries a required tolerance range depending on the nominal size of the hole and/or shaft.  These two tolerance ranges, when taken together, completely characterize the fit and control the sizes of both the hole and shaft.

Hello I’m new to wood turning. I have my dad toos, but got a carbide set for my bday. I have been learning on dads chisels and love the skew, rougher, bowl is taking me a bit but I’m getting there and I have learnt to sharpen them myself. But the carbide round omg, love it for inside the bowl. I must admit each piece of wood so far bar the pine for a rolling pin seemed to have their own let’s say uniqueness. I have told them at the club just a nice bit of timber as I want to do a shallow wider bowl to use the bowl chisels. It is all practice. Love reading your articles. Amanda

The first principle to grasp is the fit designation of the shaft/hole joint.  The fit designation ranges from clearance fits to interference fits.  This is an intuitive concept to grasp- a clearance fit specifies a fit where there will always be a gap in the joint between the mating shaft and hole.   Even at the maximum shaft and minimum hole tolerance, the shaft will be able to freely pass through the mating hole. Conversely, an interference fit is a fit where there will always be overlap in the joint between the specified mating shaft/hole, even at the minimum material condition values allowed by the shaft and maximum value allowed by the hole tolerance values (i.e., the largest hole and the smallest shaft).  This concept is illustrated in the figure below for both Clearance and Interference fits.

Many pen turners use carbide tools to shape pens. Guess what? Those same carbide tools can be used to made bowls, perhaps small bowls, but it’s a great way to experiment before committing to the expense and time of learning traditional HSS tools.

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I can understand to a certain degree, perhaps why some people are sensitive to carbide tools and YouTube videos. Many people treat woodturning as a casual hobby or pastime.

Tolerance chartPDF

It’s easy to understand how people who have spent much time developing skills and are more serious about woodturning, might be defensive, especially when someone casually shows up and creates acceptable results using carbide tools right off the bat.

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Bernard, Thanks for writing and sharing. Again, I highly recommend that you do what works best for you. It sounds like you have a setup that works well for you and that’s the ultimate goal. All the best to you and enjoy! Happy Turning, Kent

The second sensitivity landmine I walked into was mentioning YouTube. “Oh, there are people in those videos that will get you killed if you learn on YouTube.” Okay, I guess I won’t bring that up again. I especially won’t be sharing my YouTube channel with them. LOL

They’re not going to change, and you can only do what’s best for you. Just know these people are out there if you haven’t met them yourself yet.

I’m so glad I waited and learned first before buying stuff. God knows I would have purchased many unnecessary items that would have only collected dust.

Again, I repeat, use what works best for you. If you are using carbide scrapers and getting the results you desire, then stick with it. If, however, you are learning and want to improve your turning skills and have the most options available, then traditional tools are the ideal goal.

Hi- Im really enjoying all your articles and info! Incredibly Helpful! My question is how are carbide tools the working with green wood?

Although there is a lot more to be said about all of the various fit designations and the ideal times to employ each within different mechanical applications, this brief rundown of topics should provide the design engineer with enough understanding to begin working with the fit tables, specifying fits, and obtaining fit tolerance numbers for use in design tolerance and alignment studies.

The process of specifying a fit flows downhill from here; depending on the fit, there are various possible hole/shaft specification pairings.  For example, using a H7 hole basis as a reference, a strong interference fit would utilize a t6 shaft specification.  Therefore the joint specification could be simply described as an H7t6 fit.  Two summary tables for both hole and shaft reference fits are shown below to better illustrate the concept.

Without the sharpening station, you don’t have tools to turn at the lathe properly. Because of this, my first serious woodturning purchase was a sharpening station.

I’m desperately trying to find the interference fit for a 6004 Nachi Bearing – the bearing fits into a hub and it’s the 42 diameter tolerance in bore is what I’m after. Are you able to recommend a tolerance?

The standardized nomenclature of the shaft/hole fittings differentiates between hole basis and shaft basis fits.  The fits are two digit letter/number designations where the hole basis fits are noted with a capital letter (H7) while the shaft basis fits are noted with a lower case letter (h7).  This is the most important concept to remember when sorting through the shaft/hole fit specifications.  The second important concept to note is that fits can be specified using either a hole or a shaft as the primary reference basis.  This means that fits can be specified from existing holes or shafts, which is important to know for design purposes, but in most instances, it’s up to the designer to decide how to build the joint from either a shaft or hole reference point.

Here is a link to the Nachi Catalog which will have the tolerances for you. Click on the Appendix Table. Thank you! -Carlicia

Yes, it will take more time to develop the fine motor-muscle skills needed to make precision cuts, but the results will be worth the effort.

These angles all work together to ease the cutting edge of the bowl gouge gently against the wood bowl surface. David Ellsworth refers to the cut of the bowl gouge being much like whittling. A bowl gouge gracefully shaves off thin layers and shapes the wood underneath.

Fred, Thank you for writing and sharing! Interesting perspectives. You are right in many ways. I’m also a professional photographer. ? And I’ve thought of that same analogy. However, carbide scrapers, and even the “negative rake” versions, might compare to some of the first 2 or 4MP digital cameras. Yes, perhaps if some major advancements come in carbide scrapers, they will rival traditional tools. But for now, 35mm film is superior!!! LOL ? Happy Turning! Kent

Creating bowls as pieces of art can be done with a mix of tools. However, it will be difficult, for example, making elegant 1/8-inch thick walled bowls using only carbide tools. Fine precision work is best performed with a traditional bowl gouge making micro-fine smooth shaving cuts.

Tolerance fit chartcalculator

Great question! It is difficult to say what the implications are as it depends on your application environment. It is recommended to stay as close to the specified gap as manufacturers have extensively tested to find that value. There are a variety of couplings to choose from that may fit your application needs. Check out our couplings here:

I enjoy owning and driving a nice car, but I do not enjoy working on it, and I value my time too much to do it. I enjoy turning wood and creating a nice piece of art, but I do not enjoy stopping what I am doing and spending time at the sharpening station. Obviously there arguments against having this attitude, but there must be at least a few people buying those carbide tools or they wouldn’t be out there.

Hello Caricia, Thank you so much for the informative article. Can the MISUMI shaft product catalog be downloaded? Thank you in advance

I found a turning group that meets once a week. The same group I still turn with every week. My first visit was fantastic, and I even left with my second wood turned bowl. This time made with a traditional bowl gouge. Wow, was that tool different at first!

Hi Kevin, Depending on how the shaft was machined, it might not be 24.99mm the entire length. If you’re looking for a clearance fit, I would recommend increasing your tolerance on the shaft. Thank you! -Carlicia

To be quite honest, if you decide to only “casually” learn traditional woodturning using traditional bowl gouges, spindle gouges, and round nose scrapers, it can take many years before you get the hang of turning confidently.

The answer can be highly controversial, depending with whom you speak. To be honest, carbide and traditional turning tools each have advantages and disadvantages.

Before I started turning wood bowls, I was fascinated with the idea of turning a wood bowl. I watched tons of YouTube videos and read articles online until one day a turning seminar popped up at a local woodworking store. I jumped at the opportunity.

After turning my first bowl, I still felt I needed to learn much more before I committed to purchasing a lathe and other gear.

Allen, Thank you for writing and sharing! To answer your question, it might help a bit, but the carbide will still be scraping compared to the bowl gouge. Give it a try at 45°, you might find it works for you. If not, give the bowl gouge a chance. All the best to you and Happy Turning!

Also, if you were to purchase a set of three carbide scrapers, which are all necessary to make a wood bowl, they cost almost $400. A single 1/2″ bowl gouge, which can be used to turn a complete bowl costs under $100. A full set of three different sized, quality bowl gouges is still less than the carbide set.

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ISOtolerance Chartfor holes and shafts PDF

Fits and tolerancesChartPDF

And you are right, a quality expensive tool, if used poorly, can make terrible cuts, and a cheap homemade tool, if used well can produce a great final surface.

Amanda, Thank you for writing and sharing! It sounds like you are learning fast! Be sure to see this video about the bowl gouge, if you haven’t already > https://youtu.be/txMcZ4yFOfA?si=zSUB9Zfdl_wljgVu And yes, every wood species is different in one way or another. It’s fantastic that you are noticing this as you turn. You are well on your way to being a great turning. Keep it up. Happy Turning! Kent

Thank you, Carli. End to end turning, or spindle turning will have the best results by using a spindle gouge. You can also use carbide scrapers, but remember they will be scraping vs. cutting that occurs with a spindle gouge. Have fun!

Over time you will probably be turning with a mix of traditional and carbide tools. A combination of tools is entirely acceptable!

With traditional turning tools, there is a learning curve and time commitment needed to gain proficiency. Along with this skill comes a perception of earned respect from fellow turners.

After watching many of your YouTube videos I decided to venture into bowl turning after years of spindle. My thoughts on carbide vs traditional. I picked up a 5/8 bowl gouge shaped it to a 55 degree bevel and have never looked back. Maybe I was lucky but the gouge felt natural in my hand and I was off and running. Out of curiosity I picked up a mid level set of carbide tools to see if they were worth all the hype. The first time I touched the inside of a bowl it felt like I was holding a sharp stick making all kinds of terrible cuts and catches. It went back in the fancy case and its now collecting dust on a shelf I will probably never touch one again. To me I feel there is a perfect way to describe the difference between the two, The bowl gouge is a graceful artist tool and the carbide as a kids toy get it done quick looks be dammed. Yeah I’m deep in the anti-carbide camp they truly make me cringe when I see someone using one and I’m sure will get all kinds of flack. They probably do have there place just not in my hands!

On the other hand, if you have made a few bowls and you’re excited about the idea of making bigger, better bowls, you might decide to learn traditional HSS bowl gouge techniques and other tool usages.

While one-on-one instruction is no easy, very expensive, and time-consuming, I’m working on the next best thing. I am developing online training courses that will take you step-by-step through the entire bowl turning process, including understanding, supported wood grain cuts, and bowl gouge use. Each lesson will have comments and responses to add to the learning. And if I see people aren’t understanding a particular concept I will go in and produce additional videos and materials until everyone gets it! It’s going to be like nothing out there!

Kent, Just saw one of your youtube videos on bowl making and am still amazed how easy it looks when using the HSS tools. I’ve been turning for a couple years and being a self starter jumped right in with carbide tools and have made some beautiful bowls albeit with extensive sanding due to the end grain ripping out. I have purchased a couple Sorby tools to try and finish the surfaces prior to sanding but having a hard time on finding the right approach angle so if you could point to a good video on developing this skill it would be much appreciated. Wanted to get your opinion; what if you took a straight carbide scraper and mounted it at a 45 deg angle (longitudinally) do you think that would help “slice” the end grain? Thanks

I have a mix of both and use them both. I tend to like the rougher gouge in HSS for getting started but if you turn hard wood (which I most often do…. Pecan, Maple, Oak, and sometimes exotics) I like the durability of carbide and less sharpening. Your points are well taken but the purpose of this is for fun and when it starts feeling like lots of work, I get less interested. I am retired now and I do wood turning as a relaxing activity and not a competitive sport. I run into purists from time to time who would never touch carbide but I find that as silly as somebody who refuses to use carbide blades on a table saw or a router. My next purchase is probably going to be a bowl scraper and I am looking for a good carbide alternative but am not opposed to hss. I have a Carter skew chisel that I love so I am not locked into either set of tools, just want to continue to enjoy the lathe work.

Erick, Thank you for signing up. Not to worry. I notice the double payment and have already refund one of them. Welcome and enjoy the course! Happy Turning! Kent

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Traditional HSS turners think that the bowl gouge provides a superior cut that can’t be matched. Sure, the skill needed to master a bowl gouge does not happen overnight, but that too is a source of pride for a craftsman. Sharpening tools frequently is an accepted part of the turning process for a HSS turner.

I am interested in taking your sharpening E-course, but I want to make sure I’m starting from a good place. What I mean is that I have a varied set of bowl gouges, with different flute shapes from different manufacturers. I’ve seen some online articles that speak about flute shape and “best uses”, but I’ve not seen anything yet that speaks about how the flute shape is related to the grind (and whether or not it makes a difference).

Erick, Good Question. The bowl gouges over the years have been “U” and “V” shaped. When the current parabolic flute shape was introduced it pretty much moved the U and V out of the market. The parabolic bowl gouge shape is the current standard and the one to use. All the best to you and Happy Turning! Kent

In about three hours, I went from never turning anything on a lathe to turning my first bowl. It turned out pretty nice despite less than a smooth surface.

Kind of reminds me of trying desperately when I was first getting into fly fishing which was the best weight rod to have. Much like wood turning, there are many many opinions out there about that. But the best piece of advice I received was from another fisherman instead of a rod salesman: “Whatever you buy, won’t be your last rod.” 9 flyrods later, I have proved him right. But the other guys had some appropriate answers also…”It depends.”

With turning, I think the proper tool depends on the particular type of cut, on the particular part of a bowl, made out of a particular type of wood. With that in mind, I use a mix of carbide and HSS. Most of the points you make in your article I have pretty much figured out on my on (but without actually putting them into well articulated words as you have) after 2 or 3 years of pretty much self-learned turning.

If you are new to turning and aren’t sure if you’ll like turning, or more importantly, whether you’ll keep doing it, try the carbide tools.

The round shaped carbide tool works well for the bowl interior, but not well on the exterior. A square shaped carbide scraper is good on the bowl exterior, but not the interior. Because of this, you need more than one carbide tool to turn a bowl.

Stay tuned. The first-course “Tool Sharpening for Wood Bowl Turning” will be coming out first. Then it will be followed by the Wood Bowl Turning Course.

To become proficient using a traditional bowl gouge, you will need to learn about supported grain direction cuts, riding the bevel, the different bowl gouge cutting techniques, and much more.

Hi Carlicia. Very informative article you made. I have a question. We have a SS 316 round shaft with a shaved area that its diameter is 24.99 mm. The bearing has a 25mm ID hole with a tolerance of + 0 and -0.007. Is the shaved shaft too thick? We are not able to slide the shaft all the way it is needed. Any thoughts are very appreciated!

If I were going to stress any particular point a bit more than your article has, it would be that “properly” sharpened is as critical to the process as just being sharp. Sharpening the tool at the same exact angle(s) every time does not come easy (especially the bowl gouge), and I believe its that criticality of the sharpening process that scares more intermediates than just using the tool properly (I say “intermediates” because beginners don’t yet understand the importance of proper sharpening).

You may consider checking these articles out next:• BOWL GOUGE BASICS – BEGINNER GUIDE (PARTS, USE, SIZES, GRINDS)• WOLVERINE VARI-GRIND JIG – ILLUSTRATED GUIDE BOWL GOUGE SHARPENING• VARI-GRIND JIG SETUP ONEWAY WOLVERINE SHARPENING SYSTEM• BOWL GOUGE SHARPENING TECHNIQUES STEP BY STEP• BOWL GOUGE SHARPENING ANGLES – SURPRISE ANSWER

Tolerance fit chartshaft

Figure 2: Commonly Used Fitting table- (Detailed fit tolerance tables along with many more resources are available via the MISUMI shaft product catalog.  These resources provide the designer with everything that is needed in order to design a highly engineered fit for any application.)

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Hello I need assistance How do I get the inside diameter of the bush for a Running Fit. I have the outside diameter of the shaft No 1 is 38,00 mm.

Hi! I’m Kent, a husband, dad, papa, graphic designer, photographer, artist, traveler, birder, dark chocolate lover and I’m addicted to turning wood bowls! Learn more about me, see the online courses I made for you, and join our group on Facebook. Ready for your wood bowl adventure? Click here to Get Started

After the basic definitions have been grasped, the designer should then be made aware of the general guidelines available to determine the classification of the fit for a desired application.  Obviously, if a must be able to slide or move in the joint, for applications such as a journal bearing mechanism, some type of clearance fit should be specified.  Conversely an interference fit is probably required if relative motion of the shaft in the hole is prohibitive, the location of the shaft must be precisely controlled, the fit must be able to transfer weight, and/or the part does not need to be disassembled for maintenance purposes.  The transition fit might be employed somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, when a small amount of motion may be tolerated in the joint in order to better facilitate assembly and disassembly of the parts.

If precision sharpening was a lot easier and more foolproof, then there wouldn’t be so many different types of systems to do it. (But I’m not gonna ask which is the best…I learned my lesson back with fly rods!). For those who have mastered it, they might tend to downgrade the issue, but for those of us who still wrestle with the issue, it can be a stumbling block.

In between these two extremes are the “transition fits” where the specified tolerances of the hole and shaft allow for either an interference or clearance fit depending on the actual manufactured part sizes. There are other joint designations that exist as further subdivisions of the three main classifications: clearance, transition, and interference fits.

I agree with what you are saying. Yes, there are less expensive carbide tools available, and a full set of carbide tools is not necessary. However, if you are to turn bowls of a larger size and many bowls, you will need a larger carbide tool to handle the efforts. A small inexpensive carbide tool can be fine for smaller projects, but for a 16″ bowl it will give the user a hard time, not to mention muscle soreness. When doing larger bowls and/or many bowls pound for pound and dollar for dollar the HSS bowl gouge wins.

Say you’ve made a cabinet, and you want to turn a few doorknobs but have never turned before. Carbide tools would be perfect for that situation.

Depending on what type of wood you are turning, the torn out surface quality can range from okay to completely unacceptable. Often you may need to spend more time sanding a piece turned with carbide tools than you took turning it in the first place.

Perhaps it is because the relative newcomers, carbide turning tools, are quicker to learn and have rapidly introduced more people to the world of woodturning.

As I learned with the weekly turning group, it became apparent that the sharpening station was almost as essential or equal to the lathe.

I fully understand you are primarily just making a point comparing the cost of buying 3 carbide tools to buying only the bowl gouge, but just to be flippant for a moment, who in the heck is not gonna end up buying a bunch of turning tools no matter what is at the tip!

Brian, Good for you for trying both. You’ve found what works best for you. Well done. Keep up the good work! All the best to you and Happy Turning! Kent

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