If you are cutting dry you should have an air blast all the time.
What is the steel, what is your rpm, what is your feed?
A depth of cut of 0.1 is quite small.
You mention cutting all the way through: on material 0.4" thick you could drill through and then do everything at full 0.4" depth with an air blast.
Have you seen the videos I made showing a 1/2" cutter in hot rolled steel in this thread?
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...t=73902&page=4
Not nevessarily directly applicable to what you are doing maybe but it shows you what is possible when you grit your teeth.
If you are machining a higher carbon steel you could probably maintain the same rpm but back off the feed.