[mark yundt]

Was just talking to my dentist about this very thing,,he said I can have all the used ones I want ( they too are clean) They might not be sharp enough for dental enamel,,,but they sure would work on wood. Same for the picks and things. He said he gets lots of request for them from mechanics,,modelers,,etc. so I'm not that far off base. The only thing is ,,,these are generally very tiny. Pretty hard to use the burrs to do anything of consequence.

[susieq]

If you are not doing some real tiny work, it's true that these little bits are not going to do you any good. I like the tiny diamond points for carving tiny eyes in my santas....for carving the eye down inside the eyelids.....

Those bone cutters are great for doing stop cuts with power, I use them to outline something that I am going to remove all the wood from around it....like a nose. I make a pretty deep stop cut then carve away everything around that area. Works really well.

Some of my santas have walking sticks that have faces carved into them....you need tiny bits to do that. The large black Thomas Nast style santa on my website had a mahogany pipe with a face carved into it.

But for the achitectural style work that you do Mark...yeah, dental bits are a total waste. Everything you do is so large. and very beautiful...by the way.

But dental bits have their supporters.

[Hooked]

If I ever get a micromotor, I will definitely find uses for the dental bits. In fact, I may start collecting them just for the future.

Mark,
you said you don't use any power anymore, so why are you asking your dentist for bits? LOL

[squbrigg]

I have and use a good supply of dental burrs, courtesy of my dentist, he's been very helpful over the years. I also use several dental picks and scrapers, modified and reshaped into chizels and carving knives. Very small ones, I admit, but invaluable in getting into difficult to reach places. The steel is excellent and keeps an edge really well. He saves some of his broken tools for me and I have ground them into shape and sharpened them. I often put handles on them as well, for comfort.

Bob