Reading more and more and also got the book several have recc., Gear Design Simplified.
Dan mentioned that Kozo used 2 different sides on the cutter, but a close reading of Kozo's text shows that his custom cutter was meant to be used to make one cut, then taken off and flipped to do the other cut. A lot of horsing around in my opinion, and in Ed Hume's as well since Ed made a 2 sided cutter and also made his cutters with 8 teeth, a much better cutter in my opinion.
I don't know if any of you follow Clickspring on youtube but he shows a way to get a form relieved cutter here:
This idea is shown in Malcolm Wild's book on wheel and pinion cutting too. I'm sure it originated before that. Other ways to get the relief have been shown as well, one in the Levin book, where you drill holes, the saw cuts, then bend the teeth to achieve the relief. In fact this is how Kozo makes his cutter, but with less teeth.
And then there is the Eureka tool shown in Laws' book:
So...back to my original question, which centered on NOT making your own cutter but selecting a commercial one for cutting Skew gears and the Law book has a special diagram(others have noted this) on how to calculate this for bevel gears. In general the chosen cutter used is one that would correspond to larger diameter regular spur gear.
Lastly...as Dan is doing, a 3D printed gear is an option. What this would allow is the "true" form of a bevel gear. This has some appeal...Build it in CAD, print it and make an investment casting.
Just wanted to post this in the interest of being "complete"!
Thanks all.
