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Piercing tools

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Piercing tools

#1

Piercing tools

RonBauer

I want to try my hand at piercing but am having a hard time dropping $500 on a set up for something that I may not want to continue. Is there a entry level turbine that would give me a chance to try it out? e-bay has the angled dental handpieces that might work but I read that a pencil type is preferred. Plus I doubt they have the stamina to do wood piercing. Any thoughts?

Re: Piercing tools

#3

Re: Piercing tools

John Kaner

Ron, I don't pierce as I have difficulty getting the form to less that 1/8" thick. The ones I've seen done are like eggshells and as frail... Only drop once...

Many folks start with a Dremel and good burrs. The reason folks move up to the turbines is control and less stress on the form.

Be nice if you knew someone who had the set-up and you tried it first.

A great place for carving supplies is Treeline USA. They have a great selection of power carving equipment and burrs.

Hope this helps!

Re: Piercing tools

#4

Re: Piercing tools

john lucas

I have had the same issue. I don't expect to do a lot of piercing and it's lot of money for the better systems. I haven't looked seriously at building a system from pieces and parts on ebay yet but that's probably what I'll do in the long run.

Angle or straight hand pieces are more of a personal preference. When I took a class with Binh Pho he had both for us to play with and some liked the angled and some liked straight. I saw advantages of both so I would say just buy the best deal for now.

Cutter speed is what it's all about. I use everything from pencil cutters to 16" stump grinders. When using the dremel the cutter will follow the grain very easily. It takes a lot of concentration to pierce with a Dremel even if the wood is extremely thin and I'm talking much less than 1/8". The High speed dental drills cut at 400K. It's like drawing with a pencil. It doesn't follow the grain. The High speed tool however burn the wood so if you don't like the burned edges you have to make a really light cut as the last pass. I found doing this with the rotation of the cutter worked better than against the rotation.

I've played with pencil grinders that run at 50K which is twice what a Dremel runs and it really didn't make much difference in it's following the grain difficulty. The ones I used had less power than the Dremel but I have heard that the more expensive ones do have more power, no more speed.

I'll be following this thread to see how to get into High speed cutting less expensively. I want to use it for fine detail carving rather than piercing. A lot of gun stock carvers do that and it looks like it would open up some possibilities for me.

Re: Piercing tools

#5

Re: Piercing tools

mike foster

John,

You can use a dental handpiece for carving but the problem you run into is that the high speed of the burs will easily burn any wood (some more than others). What I like for fine detail carving is the electric carving motors that run from about 0-50000 rpm (as opposed to 200000 or more). In the dental world these are called micro-motors. These usually accept the 3/32 burs, but some will have different collets and accept other size burs as well. I have about every type of power carving tool available, but the Micro-motor is my go to unit for anything like fine detail carving. I do use dental handpieces, but almost exclusively for piercing. There are tons of models of micromotors out there. Do a google search and be overwhelmed with choice. Here's a link to one.

http://www.mastercarver.com/new-micro-pro-champion-set/

I use one made for the dental industry, but they are all similar.