The Amazing Carbide Burr - Metal Working Tools You Need!!

hey i'm chris from make everything and today we are going to be talking about tungsten carbide

burs why you need them in the shop what they're good for and if you make furniture

with wood and steel you're definitely going to want to stay tuned for this one check it out

all right so you might be familiar with carbide burs but maybe not ones of this size

you can find them in a smaller size which would be used on like a dremel like this

in your local hardware store but these larger ones can be really really great for all sorts of metal

working if you saw my video about grinding inside corners you probably recognize the carbide burr

so right here we've got two different types we've got some double cut for steel and then

some single cut for aluminum and what i want to show you today is just how versatile something

like this can be in your metal shop especially if you're doing anything sculptural or anything

artistic where you need to sort of grind into areas that you can't get to with a sanding belt

or maybe something that you would normally do with a file so here are two different style of carbide

burr for different materials so what you've got here is a single cut aluminum bur which you can

see these very large gullets between the cutting flutes and that's to allow that aluminum to sort

of evacuate while you're cutting and then here you've got a double cut steel designed carbide

burr now these are a little more common and you've probably seen these before now if you've ever used

these on aluminum you'll notice that these flutes can get clogged up pretty badly and that's called

chip welding and once you weld the chip into these sometimes it can be really difficult to remove

if not impossible and you've actually got to burn that chip out so what i'm going to show you is a

couple of examples on how we can use these steel ones and then i'll show you just how much of a

difference it makes when you use these aluminum specific ones in a piece of aluminum now as far

as the tools that you need to use a carbide bur you've got a couple of options i always tend to

go with a cordless option if i can and these are both some cordless grinders that milwaukee

makes so this one is a quarter inch shank die grinder and this can use various different tools

and it's got four speeds here on the back and then a little bit of variable speed here in the trigger

so anytime you use a tool in a grinder you're always going to want to check the recommended

speed from the manufacturer just to make sure you don't burn it out prematurely something

that i think is a little more common in sort of the everyday shop is a dremel so a dremel

is just a brand name but it's also sort of the name of a tool you can call this

a rotary tool as well this one's also a cordless from milwaukee and it's also variable speed

and i really like using one of these with a carbide burr anytime i'm doing really fine

finish work to grind out inside welds or inside corners now you can get carbide birds in a ton

of different shapes and these shapes are very important for the work that you're going to

be able to do with them because if you've got a specific corner or a specific shape you're

trying to grind you can almost always find a carbide burr that will fit into that application

you've got these little straight shank ones and a very common shape is this sort of

rounded lobe shape which gets you in tight corners really well now a more common and much

less expensive option if you're looking for a die grinder is pneumatic tools now these are cheaper

to buy because they have no motor inside them but obviously you do need an airline and an air setup

to use these the benefit of tools like this is you traditionally get a lot higher rpm

which can be good for much smaller grinding and they're very very light but then again

you also have to worry about being hooked up to an airline so you're constantly going to be

limited by the airflow in your compressor and the length of your hose so while i do have these

and i do use them on occasion i typically always opt for something with a battery

that i can bring to and from a job site or to and from different areas of the shop and i don't have

to worry about being attached to anything all right so right here we've got a prime example

for use of a carbide bur so this is essentially a slot that i'm trying to make now i drilled

two half inch holes over on the drill press and they're pretty close to one another and if you've

ever tried to do this you know if you try to make these holes overlap the drill bit's just gonna

stick and usually the drill bit will break so if i wanted to do this with a file i'd have to get in

here with a file and i'd have to actually manually try to remove this whole bridge of material and

it's not very big but it's big enough where if you had to do a bunch of them it would really take a

lot of time this is a perfect application for a carbide burst we're going to be able to grind

out that material this is steel it's not hardened but this burr can cut i believe up to 45 rockwell

because it is so much harder than the material itself so i'm going to set this die grinder to

about the second available speed and then one of the big things to remember when you're using a

carbide bur is the little pieces of metal um the chips that it produces are like little slivers

they get in your skin they get on your clothes so i always try to wear long sleeves and i try

to wear pretty well covering gloves because i hate trying to get those little slivers out of my skin

so let me show you how quickly we can grind out that bridge

so just like that in under a minute i've been able to create

basically a one inch by half inch slot in this piece of 3 16 thick steel

so if you were working on a furniture project and you wanted a slot that a bolt could float in

this would be a perfect application for that now a little more of an extreme example is over

here we've got a much larger bridge to make a bigger slot and again we're going to use

the bur and i'll just show you how quickly we can remove that much material as well

so again in just about a minute i was able to grind all that away you'll notice when i was

grinding that there was a little bit of chatter that's just because i had so much of the cutter

engaging with the material if you're just grinding on the edge you don't really get that but you do

have to be careful and make sure you're holding on to your tool really really firmly just so it

doesn't chatter away and you can see these little chips developing these things are like the worst

chips in the metal shop they get in your skin and they are so difficult to get out so you definitely

want to be careful and i like to use compressed air to blow this stuff away and get it out of my

clothes before i go home for the day now a similar application in a furniture building environment is

when you have a tubular leg and you want to bolt it to a wooden top and you want a bolt to be able

to float in there this one's a little bit bigger because i drilled a 7 8 hole here but i just

want to show you that with these especially these longer quarter inch ones you can usually get down

to the bottom side of a piece of tubing if you have to in order to drill these out now i've made

conference tables and larger scale furniture where i've used this one by two tubing and being able

to make those slots can be super super helpful now something like this if you have a plasma

table or an iron worker you could actually punch these holes but you're not going to be able to do

that in a piece of tube so using a carbide burr is really going to help you accomplish something that

you couldn't do with any other tool unless you were to cut it with a plasma torch from both sides

you could again get in here with a file but that's going to be a lot of hand work

when i'm pretty sure we can accomplish it with this in under a minute once again

so super easy nice big slot that i could put a very large piece of hardware in with a washer

and i could very easily have a travel

inside there now this burr on the back side we could just take the grinder again and rip that off

so if you watched my video about grinding inside welds i talked about these curved flap

discs and these do a great job of getting inside those corners but another option is also again

to use a carbide burr you can get in there and grind those out really quickly and i

showed these in the video but i'll just show it again here since we're on the topic

super quick way to deal with an inside corner weld like that this will leave a

nice clean smooth finish you can get back in there if you want to make it perfect with a

file or some sandpaper but it's already super super smooth and it's a really nice transition

while we're looking at this piece of tubing we can also look at a different shaped bur

and we can actually take care of a surface weld like that using one of these rounded points

versus this little star versus this little cone these little cone ones are great because you

can get into tight areas but the rounded point on this will actually allow you to grind this

out so that you can get this down a little bit smoother if that's all you have

now i don't really find the carbide burr for that type of grinding very practical

but if you need some sort of clearance and you just need to grind away material quickly

i don't really think there's a better way than just using the ball end of one of these

and dragging it across now sometimes depending on your project you just need to gouge a half circle

in the end of a piece of tube even for clearance for a bolt

and something like this is difficult to do with a drill bit because if you try to drill on this

you're likely going to wander off to the side now again you could get in here with a file but a lot

faster way is with a burr now we're going to go the full size of this but if you had a smaller

carbide burr like one of these you could make the hole or this sort of slot whatever size you wanted

super fast and really really clean now i also mentioned being able to use a smaller tool like a

dremel with these so i'll show you real quick how you could use one of these in the same application

so you can see i was essentially able to make two different size steps

one with this larger bur and then again with the dremel which is such a small and common tool

you can easily grind away at this eighth inch thick tubing now one of the best things about

tungsten carbide burrs is their ability to cut hardened material so this is just

mild steel it's pretty soft but if you ever do anything that involves heat treating or if you

experiment with knife making you'll know that once you get your blade or your piece hardened

it's very difficult to do precise or even quick removal so with a tungsten carbide burr

a lot of times it's hard enough where it's harder than the material that you're cutting away

so anytime i'm working on a folding knife or a very small intricate piece i can use one

of these because they're so much harder than the material to grind away stuff they also work great

on stainless and titanium which a lot of other tools just don't touch but now going the opposite

direction with a softer material i'll show you how well these single flute aluminum specific carbide

burrs work on a nice big chunk of aluminum so here we've got a nice big piece of aluminum

and i'm just going to do some stock removal with these single cut aluminum specific burrs

so you can see with this lower flute count this thing just absolutely shreds through aluminum i

mean it's essentially like using an end mill but free hand and the applications for this

are really vast especially if you do anything sculptural or anything mechanical where parts

need to move against each other because if you need to make clearance or room you know grinding

aluminum with sandpaper or traditional kind of grinding discs is it always has a tendency

of clogging those up so if you can use this nice low flute count cutter you can really

remove material efficiently and quickly it is all over me and all over the shop but again you

want to be careful and wear gloves because these little shards will get in everywhere

all right so that's kind of a good example of the different ways that you can use a carbide burr

like i said they work incredibly well in mild steel and on aluminum when you use the correct

cutter design now they're a single cut and double cut for both steel and aluminum now when i'm doing

finish and fine work i like to use a single cut carbide burr because it just leaves a little bit

cleaner of an edge the double cuts remove material faster but they do require a little more cleanup

if you're trying to do something like you know really fine especially if you're doing knife

making you're probably going to want to get single cut and you're going to want something

that's definitely tungsten carbide so you don't have to worry about dulling it like you would if

you use high speed steel the carbide burrs that i used in this video were provided by my friends

over at faired abrasives they make an incredibly high quality set of carbide birds you can get

over on amazon i'll put some links down below and you can check them out these smaller burrs

for dremels they also make um you really just want to get whatever is going to work for

your application i personally like the eighth inch single cut burrs for doing knife making

and i really like the quarter inch burs with the rounded edge for when i'm doing metal working in

steel and i need to grind things away very quickly like i said you can get battery powered 120 volt

powered or pneumatic powered die grinders the burs generally don't care what they're in

but you cannot use these in like a cordless drill as much as it looks like you could they generally

don't have enough speed to work efficiently but once you have them in your arsenal i think you'll

use them a lot i really hope you enjoyed this little video i like bringing awareness of tools

like this to my viewers here on youtube because there are just so many different things in the

shop that i've learned how to use that just help me get my work done that much better and that much

faster time is money and i'm constantly looking for ways to cut down on my time by using better

tools and better processes so if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and don't forget

to subscribe to my channel for more videos here in the shop more videos woodworking and metal

working and building cool stuff here and also if you like tool tip videos like this leave a comment

down below check out the links below on where you can get some of these tools and there will be some

other videos down there as well that'll talk more about inside corner grinding and some of the other

tool and shop process videos that i've made if you want to see what i'm doing on a day-to-day basis

follow me right here at make everything shop and if you're interested in seeing fair products in

person in action check out the catskill mountain maker camp this columbus day weekend in east

durham new york at the blackthorne resort uh it is a great maker event i will be there lots of

my friends will be there and i'll be bringing with me a ton of fair stuff to give away and show off

we'll have the inside corner grinding disc we'll have some sets of files some wire wheels we'll

have some carbide burrs they're going to be doing blacksmithing timber framing jimmy duress is going

to be demoing on a bandsaw we're going to be doing tons of awesome stuff tickets are still available

like i said me and my friends will be there answering questions and i'll be giving away a

ton of stuff from my friends that faired and some stuff from my friends over at lincoln electric so

check that out there'll be a link down below the catskill mountain maker camp the only maker event

of 2021 and it's going to be a blast so definitely come and check it out if you're in the northeast

i hope you enjoyed this video again i'm chris zeph for make everything i hope to see you on

the next one oh by the way everybody that sent me a nice message about the flood video

thank you i'm fine the shop is fine and if you're looking for ways to help find an organization in

louisiana or in new jersey or queens where there was devastation and donate your money there

i appreciate everyone's offer to kind of set up a gofundme and all these different things i didn't

lose anything and i don't want anyone to give me any money for something that i don't need donate

where it needs donate to one of these charities or shelters down in the gulf or like i said up

here in the northeast where the devastation was bad thank you all so much and i'll see you soon