Thread: Looking for advice from anyone with tool making experience

Generally a 'white' grade grinding wheel, a tub of coolant/water and a flattening and profiling tool (diamond dresser).

If it is for a cartridge rim, what I would suggest is grabbing a small section of hss tool steel as close to the finished tool size as you can get and brazing it onto a chunk of mild steel about the size you need for your tool holder. Or, a tool holder for that size of tool steel and then you can just clamp it and go to town which is the better option again.

Reason for this is the less metal you have to remove the less heat you generate and the less cooling and risk to the heat treatment of the tool steel (this is the dreaded 'blued edge' when you've got the edge of the piece of tool steel too hot, and it will either blunt quickly, chip off or weld itself to the material you are cutting).

What you are talking about profile wise sounds fairly simple, I've ground up thread cutting tools and things like belt V-section tools which sound somewhat similar and it's not too hard as suggested - a good metal layout or marking out dye and a steady hand with the 'right' ppe and proceed slowly cooling often. Keep the grinding wheel clean/dressed as well as a wheel lodged pr packed with surface crustys will produce a lot more heat.

This is actually not strictly speaking a 'toolmaker' job - any machinist/turner should be able to do this as it's a reasonably common job in the industry.