"larry g" wrote in message ...
Just for grins after reading this thread I grabbed a 1 1/8" piece of square
steel, and hacksawed it through with a hand hacksaw, wimpy frame and a used
18 tpi 10" long blade. Took ~2.5 minutes. I then took the same stock and
....
Hi Larry. Thanks for the real life data. There have been a lot of good
suggestions. One of the problems is that I am using a 24 tpi blade. The
hacksaw is tightened very well, and the frame is reasonably sturdy. It
is cutting (there are a lot of metal filings), but just too slowly. I tried
cutting a 1/2 inch piece of rebar. It took 10 minutes. This is in line with
the 1 hour per square inch of material cut.

There was a suggestion to use a high quality coarse blade, like a Starret.
I'll give that a try. If I can do 1 square inch in 2 minutes, or even in
5 minutes, that will be great!

Thanks,
Eric