Came within a hair's breadth of buying a Woodcut tools pro-forme flexi hollower

 It’s awfully purdy what with the slick sexy slicing hook and the  brass bumper to prevent you ever catching it.   The physics are all there.  The thing has to work as advertised.  It's got to.

 

But I was hesitant. I wanted it to handle punky spalt.

 

Well I read a review that said it worked great but in punk it got all clogged up because of that bumper which prevents the catches.   - - Makes sense.  http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/page.asp?p=1690

 

 

I was still almost sold. It just looks so cool.

 

Then I wondered how you sharpen the thing.

 

Turns out there is no good way to do it other than a diamond hone from the inside of the hook.  Take it to the grinder and you won’t have a cutting tool in  a very few grinder sessions.

So it’s all about the hand hone, applied often.

 

OK that sounds like   a PITA, but  I was almost still sold but I had one more question.

What’s it cost to replace the cutter?

 

Almost a hunnert dollahas ~!!!

 

Well look at the stinkin bleeding howling mass of over-built-&-under-engineered High Speed M2 Steel they  use just for the cutter:

That whole thing: three holes and two of them tapped and machining and Grinding is all M2 HSS.

No wonder they  want  like $79.00 each for the  replacement cutter alone.

 

 

Somebody need to hire a real engineer. Coz' that brute force approach stinks.  A real engineer would spec it from M8 not M2 because the extra cobalt would be better for wood.

 

Well I gotta say there's  got to be a cheaper way to skin that cat and I ain't spending a hunnert and fidy dollahs on a cutting tool that will cost  me another C note every time I need a new edge.   N' I dun care how groovy the You Tube videos of the thing are.

 

If it were my tool and I were selling it, I'd order those cutters from China by the box-load and just have 'em around and sell 'em for $20 or 30 each.    Maybe  re-engineer it to be a cheaper steel body with a carbide insert braised to the steel.

Why can't you just make one- or a couple? keep the extras honed up and swap them out when needed. Then on a rainy, sharpening day prepare them all again. Looks like you could buy some tool bit stock and go from there.

Well yah,  in theory 
Hardened HSS can be drilled  with a straight flute carbide drill and plenty of lube.

Tapping it is out of the question

 

 

The hitch is grinding that hook.  That's an awful lot of time on the grinder and you'd need a wheel specially dressed with the radius. So in the end, I don't think the ROI would be there.

Really, it's a piece that lends itself best to a production shop with all the appropriate equipment.

 

That's the flaw in the original design.  It's just very expensive to make and no matter how good the design is as a lathe tool, there is not enough market to justify high production.