"Grant Erwin" wrote in message
...
I have a little Scotchman ironworker. It shears structural steel stock
fine, but it hasn't ever worked on sheet metal (gap too big). Today I
removed the lower bar shear blade, cleaned it, cleaned behind it, and
shimmed it out to close up the gap. Now it will cut sheet metal, except in
the middle. There is apparently a wear spot in the middle, because when the
blades are closed the gap in the center is about .005" larger than
elsewhere. It would make sense, because that's where most of the flat bar
gets sheared.

Seems like I could grind the vertical face of the blades until they clean
up, adding shims to replace the material ground off. I hate to think of
what a new pair of shear blades would cost from Scotchman!

I'm wondering if my plan will work. Anyone else try this? It wouldn't just
be an issue with an ironworker shear, could be about any guillotine or
scissor type shear.

If this does work, then I'm going to have to find someone with a bigger
surface grinder than I have, mine's only 12" and the blades are 14" long.

Grant Erwin
Kirkland, Washington
at a shop i worked at we would send blades to machine shop to be ground on 2
edges to remake a "square" edge on the blade.