Well, does it knurl, Fatty?

The needle bearings turned up this morning, so I replaced the "old", sloppy bearing with one of the new ones. Subjectively, it made no significant difference. You might point out that these needle bearings aren't really supposed to be used in the way they are used here, namely supporting a significant radial torque, rather than just a simple radial thrust but I'm guessing they work well enough, given that Boeni have made a fairly long-lived product based on that principle.

Anyway, on with the testing. Firstly, I needed to set it up to cut at 30 degrees with the spindle in forward (CCW) rotation. To set the tool at centre height, I can either try to force to nose of this live centre up into the guts of the tool....

...or more conveniently, at the other end of the shank.

Then get the wheel set at 30 degrees:

Doesn't look too bad for a first attempt. Seems to have cut to full depth, nice and clean:

After cutting that set of grooves, rotate the tool to -30 degrees, to cut the other set, this time with the machine running in reverse (CW):

That went well - was almost civilised:

I don't have any flood coolant set up and I'm too impatient to even set up a compressed air blast, so there's plenty of fine swarf getting mushed up in the work zone:

But after a bit of cleaning with an air line and some WD40, it doesn't look too bad:

Well, that was a bit of a needless diversion but it seemed to me that there was a challenge I needed to respond to. If I ever feel the need to put some knurls on a handle at any point, I guess I now have the means to do so.

Happy with that.