I plan to mix wood and metal working on some projects and finally ran my first test on wood this evening to see how it would cut some oak. I used some 1-1/4" oak dowel I found at Lowes this weekend for the test. Its fairly open grained and reasonably smooth. By the way this digital read out for length and diameter is fantastic!
It took some research to find these carbide inserts, they are polished and quite sharp.
Here's a set of tool holders that all use this same insert. I also have some internal boring bars that take these inserts.
Here's the results from the test. The OD is at least as smooth as the factory finish and it did a fantastic job on the end grain face cut, as good as I get from a Forrest blade. This was at 270 RPM, I did another test at 360 with the same results, at 800 RPM the finish was noticeably rougher, that was at .004 per revolution. I may try that again with a slower feed. Depth of cut each pass was .020 inch.