Grant Erwin wrote:
Gunner wrote:
Buddy came by today with a piece of 1/4" diamond plate aluminum he is
making a dashboard for his boat out of. He had come by a couple
weeks ago, and roughed it out on my WT bandsaw, and now needed to
cut the holes for the gauges, Tach etc. They were all bigger than
normal sizes..so had no hole saws big enough. I tried a decent wood
type circle cutter, which broke, made one up by tigging a piece of
3/8 x 1/2" tool steel to a 1/2" shank, and put it into my heavy
boring head, and grinding a tripanning profile on the tool steel.
Which ran 1 hole then broke the tool steel in half. Blink blink....

I finally finished all the gauge holes by hole sawing them, then
using a tapered face mill to plunge to the right diameter, and the
Big tach hole was done by hole sawing, then roughing to diameter
with using x/y handwheels and a big 2 flute end mill, finishing
with a die grinder and a carbide burr. T

there has to be a better way.

I recently had to cut out a pickguard for a heavy metal bass guitar
from aluminum diamondplate. I did the internal cutting using a jigsaw
mounted on my 1949 Shopsmith. Worked fine, but a tad tedious. I
*never* seem to have the right size hole saw! Anyway pickup holes are
rectangular with rounded corners so even if I had every hole saw made
it wouldn't have helped me.
GWE

You could have used one to cut the rounded corners ...
--
Snag aka OSG #1
'76 FLH "Bag Lady"
BS132 SENS NEWT
"A hand shift is a manly shift ."
shamelessly stolen
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