"William Wixon" wrote in message
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"Mike Young" wrote in message
et...
I need to cut a lot of 16 ga., and so thought I would put the tablesaw to
work with a chopsaw blade. It didn't seem such an awful idea, but I sure
wasn't ready for the spark show. Thought I would take a break and see if
prevailing wisdom has a commonsense reason why this is a bad thing to do.
The fire extinguisher is close at hand...

a recent project, cutting up some grating, didn't want to use O/A torch,
too cheap to buy a dry cut saw, just bought a dry cut saw blade (milwaukee
10" from amazon.com) put it on my table saw (rpm's were substantially
lower than my circular saw). worked, what for me was, OK. i use a
sliding plywood miter box on top of the tablesaw bed. one thing though,
with grating, towards the end of the cut the already cut pieces
could/would pinch the blade, which sucked, i broke/chipped a few (BRAND
NEW) teeth that way. dry cut blade was more expensive i'd imagine than an
abrasive cut off saw blade, less sparks though i'd imagine. don't know if
you can cut sheet metal with it though, i'd guess you'd have to feed it
slowly but more importantly very steadily.

The cutting action is OK, as far as that goes. I just can't get a straight
cut out of it. And I don't know why I'm surprised it makes that
burnt-grinding smell. (The woodshop is in the basement; the metal shop is in
the garage, for that very reason.) Planning and daydreaming sometimes leaves
out the details of the other senses, I guess.

The price for the abrasive blade is right: $4 and some change. Run-out and
warp is what you'd expect for that: god awful. About .030 warp on the face,
and front to back is out .010 mil. (That is kinda weird. I dialled in the
trunnions and a Forrest blade to just about 1 mil not that long ago. It's
the blade, not the arbor.)

The size of the work doesn't lend itself to clamping to the plywood sled,
and I can't find a 1/2 bolt this moment to clamp things to the miter gauge.
I'm glad to call it quits. Should maybe think about getting a shear and
press brake for this kind of work. It's a simple job if you have the tools
for it.