I have been on a quest to find some good carving burs for a while. The market seems to be flooded with way to much crap coming in from China, etc. Burs that do not run true at high speed. They vibrate all over the place at high speed.

I have also been looking for round ball carving burs bigger than a 3/16″.

Recently I saw a virtual demo by Melissa Engler and Graeme Priddle. They were using some round carving burs from Rio Grande. I ordered some of them and they are ok. Not great but ok.

I don’t like burs with course (far apart) flutes. They create to many splinters, fluff, tear out, what ever you want to call it, where the burs exit the wood. I like burs with medium flutes. Not to course not to fine. Thus I avoided the “Wax” burs at Rio Grande and ordered the “High Speed Steel” ones.

The burs I got from Rio Grande are fine. A little to fine for me. But, they are ok. They still create some fluff, but not to much. I can’t run them at full speed in my CHEAP dremels. But, high enough. This may have something to do with the quality of my dremel knock offs, not the burs.

See photo above for what I ordered from Rio Grande. Roughly 1/8″ (3.5mm) to 3/8″ (9.6mm) in ROUGHLY 1/16″ (1mm) increments.