Grant Erwin wrote:
I've owned a couple of those portabands but got rid of the last one
years ago. I recently was at an estate sale and picked one up so
cheap I couldn't pass on it.

Coincidentally, yesterday a woman offered me a bunch of angle iron
but
said it was welded into stuff too unwieldy to move in my vehicle. I
got to thinking yet again, surely there must be some way to power
this saw from my car. I could get an inverter, but I rather suspect
that the motor on this is a universally wound DC motor. Is there a
way to directly run it from battery power?

GWE

My current inverter is rated for 800 watts, it's enough to power my
mini-lathe, my small drill press or my 4x6 band saw. It's not enough
to start my Skil wormdrive or the contractor's table saw, both of which
have universal motors. It will run the 1/2" electric drill, not sure
how big a hole it would handle, though. Unless you've got a fairly
large truck, a lot of heavy copper and a source of nearly free
deep-cycle batteries, 120 v. DC isn't really a practical thing. The
chain car parts places have inverters on sale all the time here, the
problem with the higher-output units is the current draw at 12 v. You
have to wire them in directly, you can't just plug the suckers into the
cigarette lighter socket. Some of them draw about 100 amps at rated
output. Once you start thinking about hooking them up to a deep-cycle
battery and the charger for it, you might as well lay out for a
light-duty-cycle gas-fired generator. The cost will be about the same
and the convenience factor will be a lot higher.

Stan