If you use your milling machine to do stock work what speed and what types of bits do you use.

You could use anything you have, but carbide single flute router bits do a nice clean job and pull the chip UP

Right; I use regular HSS bits but I don't run them much faster than as for steel. I do feed them much faster. Still cuts faster than steel! Obviously. But if you crank up the speed to real wood working speeds, then carbide will be better.

Thanks. I think , for now, just barrel channel work.

If your going to cut a barrel channel, measure the barrel at the intersection of the end of the stock. Use a 2 flute ball end mill undersize of the this measurement. Set the depth of the quill to this dimension as well, because you don't want to cut the channel too deep. I use a 2 flute because in removes the chips better, with a 4 flute it clogs the cutter edges.

Well, you know me, I always gotta be different !


For wood, NOTHING but solid carbide end mills and ball mills. Do not use tooling with carbide inserts. Inserts are not the same tooling at all. Inserts do not have razor sharp cutting edges like ground carbide tools have. It is more like a plowing or ripping tool and is designed for heavy work in steel. It's a bit hard to describe but it actually creates a nice finish with the pressure of the tooling, by burnishing a nice finish rather than cleanly cutting a nice finish.
Stay the hell away from HSS tooling for wood. While it works very nice when new, nothing will dull and wreak an HSS tool faster than wood. If you use your nice HSS tooling on a stock you are simply pissing good money out the window. When you buy ball mills or end mills for wood, M Stratton is sort of right. 2 flute mills will clear material better. But, if you are using carbide you can and actually want to run it at LUDICROUS SPEED! So it's going to clear material no matter how many flutes you have. Run them as fast as your machine will turn it without melting down or having the machine walk down the block. I turn at 3000 RPM simply because that is as fast as my machine goes. ALWAYS, climb mill in wood and it will resist splintering and cut cleaner. As far as feed? At 3000 RPM and climb milling, about 1/2 to 1 inch per second. At 10,000 RPM? Well, how fast is the rapid traverse on your machine? When buying carbide for inletting you should have ball mills and end mills in 3/4, 9/16, 5/8, 1/2 and 1/4 inch. The end mills should be deep reach so that you can clear pistol grips with your collet chuck and reach down into mag wells. I have been using the same carbide end and ball mills in wood for 7 years and they still cut like new. As long as you use them JUST FOR WOOD, don't crash them or drop them on the concrete floor, I'm not sure how long they will last.

carbide for wood by Rod Henrickson, on Flickr

I run the cutters below at 12,000 RPM on my duplicator.

Carbide four flute at 900 to 1000 rpms.