Robust Turning Tools Overview

Mike dives into the details of the Robust Turning Tools lineup. He explains what sets them apart from other tools, including their extra length and nitride coating.

Robust Turning Tools

Video Transcript:

Hi, I'm Mike from Craft Supplies USA, and in today's video we'll be covering the new line of tools from Robust. We'll cover what makes them special and what tools are available. Robust has long been known for making some of the nicest lathes and turning accessories on the market and they've recently introduced a full set of turning tools. Robust tools are 100% American made from US forged, premium high-speed steel with a nitrite coating. And nitrating isn't just a coating, it's a diffusion process where they add extra carbon and nitrogen to the base metal to improve wear resistance and edge holding ability.

Let's go over the tools and the sizes available. First up is the round nose scraper. There's two different sizes available and they're great for getting inside boxes and finishing up your bowl. They have a negative rake box scraper and a square point box scraper. This is nice for getting the inside walls of your box and this is nice for getting a nice square bottom.

They have an 1-1/4" wide spindle roughing gouge. It's extra beefy and clears chips really well. They have a 1/4" wide beading parting tool and an 1/8" wide parting tool.

The bowl gouges come in three sizes; we have a 3/8", 1/2", and 5/8". Really good gouges, I only wish the flutes were just a little bit wider to clear chips a little more efficiently. “All the way with the nose. Now when I get to the very dead center I want to maybe roll that there and just stop”.

Then we have three sizes of spindle gouges. We have a 3/8", 1/2", and a 5/8". These have a super wide flute clear chips efficiently and you can grind a long bevel on the nose to get into those detailed coves and corners.

There's four sizes of skew to pick from, anywhere from 1/2" in up to 1-1/4". This one's really good for doing long planing cuts on a rolling pin or pepper mill. “There's one bead and now I'll take this down just a little bit more. It's always a game of taking away a little bit more looks like we got it so we have two”.

There's two different sizes of spear point scraper available, and they're really good for doing shear cuts on the inside or outside of a bowl, and it's one of Matt Monaco's favorites. “With this box elder is to produce this stuff again there's our spider webs that stuff should float to the ground”.

Here we have the round-nose negative rake scrapers. These have a French curve style grind on them, and they're really good for finishing cuts on bowls as well as just getting a really good surface.

All of these tools are sold unhandled, but Robust makes a great collet handle system for these tools. It comes with four separate collets that fit everything we have here on the table, and changing the tools is really fast and simple when you go to change tools. All it takes is a quarter turn on the collet, slide your tool out, put your new tool in and lock it down and you're good to go.

One of my favorite things about these tools is they're a lot longer than most tools on the market, giving you more tool for the money. Here's a Sorby 1/2" spindle gouge compared to the Robust spindle gouge. You can see we have almost double the length of usable flute and that's the case for the majority of the tools on the table. They're almost always going to be longer than another brand.

Another benefit with these tools is they have a milled flat all the way down the tang. That way when your tools ground all the way down to where the flute's almost gone you can still fit in your Wolverine jig and still sharpen it.

I've added a bunch of these tools to my tool panel and I'm sure you'll love them too. Give the Robust tools a shot, and you'll be glad you did.