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John McGaw John McGaw is offline
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Default Cutting Steel with Circular Saw Blades

On 1/17/2021 3:48 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
I'm installing a railing and need to cut the metal. I've got a hacksaw and
a portable circular saw, so naturally which one do I grab? The circular
saw.

I found out why they say not to cut steel with most blades. It throws hot
chips all over and dulls the blade pretty quick.

Lesson #2: Safety glasses aren't the end-all of safety. A chip found its
way past the glasses and while I'm ok it's a little sore there. I should
have been wearing a full face shield but I didn't have one on site.

Learned something else... Sanders are awesome at deburring steel. I tried
doing it with a file, then switched to the sander and wow what a
difference! Got the piece deburred, rounded, and cleaned in a minute
rather than taking 5 or more with the file.

Puckdropper


I have done it by accident but would have never thought to do it intentionally.

I had some honeycomb shades and needed to shorten them to fit inside rather
than protruding outside the window frame. I checked and the bars seemed to
be aluminum so I tightly taped everything together in the closed position
and attacked with my table saw using a good carbide blade. I've cut
aluminum and brass before using the same method with zero problems. This
time my luck ran out because, unknown to me, there are steel (or maybe
iron) weights in the lower bars of the blinds. I cut right through the
first and at that point, figuring I couldn't harm the blade any more, I cut
the other blind too. I checked the blade afterward and found two or three
chipped teeth and kept using it for some time afterward until having it
repaired/sharpened by Forrest.

--
Bodger's Dictum: Artifical intelligence
can never overcome natural stupidity.