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Sorby RS2000

Patrick Miller

Patrick Miller

Joined
Jan 20, 2011
Messages
114
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Location
Central Washington State, the dry side.
I am curious if any of you have any experience using the Sorby RS2000 hollowing system for coring? It appears to be an advertised feature but I don't find much hands-on information. It looks like the shank of the cutter quickly becomes wider than the cutter itself as the plunge progresses.....
thanks and Happy New Year!
--pat
 
Back in the old days pre Mcnaughten I did some coring with the Stewart slicer, a similar tool.

This is sort of like a parting tool on steroids.
The tool tapers from a flat parting tool type profile to a round bar.
The tool makes a wide kerf and straight cut yielding cone shape cores and wasting a lot of material.

The straight hollowing tools by Bosch or Jordan can make the similar cores.

Have fun,
Al
 
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My personal issue with these types of tools is if you get a catch, it tweaks your arm. I prefer to use a bowl saver that is secured to the bed, ala Oneway or McNaughton.

Arm brace style hollowers are designed to be used with very little tool of the rest, so less fulcrum.
 
Not overly impressed with the Sorby RS2000 System

Hi Patrick!

I have several components of the Sorby RS2000 system.

More than any other part, I use the Sorby arm brace together with a set of three John Jordan hollowers - this is the primary hollowing system that I have used for at least the past 5-6 years (probably longer than that...).

I have the Sorby 'Slicer', and as Al said, it is fine for cutting straight lines, a la a wide parting tool, but is not a very efficient coring tool compared to the McNaughton Center Saver System, which I use regularly when I have "real" coring to do. You get nothing more than a cone-shaped core out of the center part of the blank when using the Slicer; in some cases the resulting core can be used to make another piece, depending on its size - in others, cutting out the core simply means that you just have less to hollow with your gouge, and what falls on the floor is a solid cone-shaped chunk instead of shavings (Hardly worth going to the Slicer in that case). I'd estimate that my Slicer hasn't seen contact with a spinning piece of wood in over three or four years, and does its present job well of keeping the 'hollowing' drawer bottom partially filled with steel.

I was also gifted the "Hooker" tool several years ago, more as a joke about its name (the person giving the gift said that she "got me a Hooker for the evening") than the need for me to have a scraper for the inside of vessels. I do occasionally use this tool, but my home-made Hunter Tool type 10 mm carbide cutter is used much more frequently now to clean up the inside of hollow forms. When I do use it, it's in the Sorby arm brace, but as Steve said, it does tweak your arm if you get a catch, which is fairly common with this scraper. (In contrast, I am actually pretty good at hollowing efficiently with the John Jordan hollowers in the Sorby arm brace without getting any catches, and now rarely get 'tweaked' - to use the technical term 😀 ).

BTW - In my opinion, the "Side Handle" is a waste of money (....wanna buy one?).

Although the RS2000 is an interesting system, I think there are better alternatives available now. It's good you are asking these kind of questions!

Good Luck!

Rob Wallace
 
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Rob Wallace said:
I was also gifted the "Hooker" tool several years ago, more as a joke about its name (the person giving the gift said that she "got me a Hooker for the evening") than the need for me to have a scraper for the inside of vessels. I do occasionally use this tool, but my home-made Hunter Tool type 10 mm carbide cutter is used much more frequently now to clean up the inside of hollow forms.
Click to expand...

My kids bragged about giving dad a "hundred dollar hooker" for his birthday - or was it fathers' day - too. You can use carbide tooling in it if you care, you know. Machine shop owner up town gave me a bunch of shapes and sizes to experiment with years back. The round, guttered type as you see with the Hunter was the least likely to catch, and stayed sharp longer than the tantung scraper that came with the Stewart system which I use for smaller stuff.

The straight tool is not going to give you much. You'd get a better return with a dedicated coring system if you purchase expensive or highly figured timber. You can sweep it like a narrow "easy rougher" if you like, but it's inefficient. I use mine for parting and bark removal, where the grit might ruin my edge. Seldom at that.
 
Thanks everyone-
The Sorby piece wasn't very far up my want list before and has dropped off completely. Nice to have the experience of the forum! My mentor has a Oneway system that I have used successfully. Looks like a good product to save for.
Happy New Year- let the chips fall where they may
--pat
 
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