Reddit reviews Cobra Carbide 41800 Solid Carbide Turning Insert, CM14 Grade, Multilayer Coated, TT Style, TT 321, 1/8" Thick, 1/64" Radius (Pack of 10)
We found 1 Reddit comments about Cobra Carbide 41800 Solid Carbide Turning Insert, CM14 Grade, Multilayer Coated, TT Style, TT 321, 1/8" Thick, 1/64" Radius (Pack of 10). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Solid carbide tools offer long tool life and faster cutting speeds than other substrates, but are more brittle and must be used with rigid toolholding systemsMulti Layer coating TiN/TiC/TiCN/TiN for turning and milling carbon and alloy steels, tools steel and stainless steelProvides longer tool life than uncoated gradesUsed for turning, facing, and boring11 degrees relief angle
The rods come painted or something, and seldom come with instructions to scrape the coating off before use. It would be good to carry a few cheap rods in your environment to see if the coating is effective. You can get like 5 rods - 8mm thick on Amazon for a few dollars. To me that makes sense to keep one to play with, and one unused out of the same lot to keep in reserve (and a few lighters too)
>I'm looking to switch to a flint/steel or flint/titanium setup for my backup. Just wondering if anyone knew of a good modern alternative to flint?
Uh, any silicon based rock? Quartz? Chert? I guess you might be limited as to what you can find in your area. A tungsten-carbide lathe tooling insert link for photo, not an endorsement might work on steel or titanium and meets your criteria for "modern alternative". An impractical modern alternative is a battery powered angle grinder.
(Tungsten-carbide works great on ferro rods, but anything hard and sharp works on them, it's a low bar.)
So it's important to note that with flint/steel or flint/titanium, the metal is the thing that is generating the sparks, not the flint. That's opposite of what's going on with a ferro rod. You can use a knife or broken chunk of glass, or nearly anything hard to scrape the rod, and it's the rod making the sparks.
The sparks struck off a steel are much less hot than a ferro rod. Titanium is better than iron, but still doesn't give you the shower of sparks you get from a ferro rod.