Hi folks,
I was one of Art's testers, and he's got good stuff going here. I tested 2 of his toolrests.
The first is basically a round hunk of toolsteel welded to a hunk of square stock (3/4 to 1" thick). It was about 18" long. Solid, easy to set up and use, and works great. A realy nice feature is that you can slide your thumb along the back of the square stock, and use it as a guide to make sure that whatever you're turning comes out with a really straight profile. The tool steel rod welded to the top front edge is what the tool actually rides on. I've been dealing with the stock powermatic toolrest, and it gets dinged very easily (especially with the corners of the skew shaft). The tool steel bit makes a nice smooth surface that tools lide on easily, and it doesn't ding up (at least I haven't managed to yest....) Really great for spindle turning.
For faceplate turning, he provided a rest that was made out of a thick piece of sheet stock welded to the top of the tool post. It looks kind of wierd because I'm used to toolrests being more like a stick across the top - this has the plate welded on standing on the long edge - kinda like a really heavy flyswatter.... It actually worked really well. Its fairly short (maybe 8" or so), but thats fine for faceplates. solid, easy to use, good tool contact surface. A surprise was that the plate really helped with shaving/duct collection. It makes a nice surface to hang a DC hose from, and makes it really easy to aim. The surprise was that it also acts like a baffle - hardly anything flew out of the "front" (the side closest to me) of the bowl. The DC hose was mounted so that it was on the other side of the center point (at the end of the toolrest), and it was catching everything. I turned the lathe off to see what was going on, and i found that the plate of the toolrest was acting like a baffle to help concentrate the DC airflow at the back of the bowl. It probably also helped keep stuff from flying out of the front bottom of the bowl, as it was covering most of that 1/4 of the opening... Anyway, unexpected, and really nice feature.
I definitely would recomend these to anyone doing lots of turning. If you're doing faceplate work, the baffle feature alone makes it worthwhile. If you're doing spindle work, and you're using a stock toolrest, the toolsteel makes more difference than you'd ever imagine.
No affiliation, etc, just a happy camper......
--JD