I have to cut 2 perfectly matching slots in a 5 mm thick flat semicircular
piece of steel, each 15 mm by 5mm.
As per suggestion on another thread I doubled up on the hacksaw blades. This
gave me only just over 2 mm. Cutting this length with a file is not a
prospect I relish. I tried with a 3/32 cut-off wheel in a 4-1/2" grinder.
This works but holding the grinder in exactly right plane is tricky.

I wondered: what if I put a 6" cut off wheel into my bench grinder. I would
have access and control. Even if the wheel produced a thinner slot, one
could control two passes this way more easily than with a hand-held grinder.

Is anything like this feasible? has anyone done this? The maximum speed for
the 6" cut-off wheels easily exceed the 3,500 rpm of the grinder. At this
point I cannot see any other safety issues beyond those related to using a
bench grinder in the normal fashion.

Failing this, what is the maximum number of hacksaw blades anyone tried
cutting with at once?

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

On May 26, 10:31*pm, "Michael Koblic" wrote:
I have to cut 2 perfectly matching slots in a 5 mm thick flat semicircular
piece of steel, each 15 mm by 5mm.
As per suggestion on another thread I doubled up on the hacksaw blades. This
gave me only just over 2 mm. Cutting this length with a file is not a
prospect I relish. I tried with a 3/32 cut-off wheel in a 4-1/2" grinder.
This works but holding the grinder in exactly right plane is tricky.

I wondered: what if I put a 6" cut off wheel into my bench grinder. I would
have access and control. Even if the wheel produced a thinner slot, one
could control two passes this way more easily than with a hand-held grinder.

Michael Koblic wrote:
I have to cut 2 perfectly matching slots in a 5 mm thick flat semicircular
piece of steel, each 15 mm by 5mm.
As per suggestion on another thread I doubled up on the hacksaw blades. This
gave me only just over 2 mm. Cutting this length with a file is not a
prospect I relish. I tried with a 3/32 cut-off wheel in a 4-1/2" grinder.
This works but holding the grinder in exactly right plane is tricky.

I wondered: what if I put a 6" cut off wheel into my bench grinder. I would
have access and control. Even if the wheel produced a thinner slot, one
could control two passes this way more easily than with a hand-held grinder.

Is anything like this feasible? has anyone done this? The maximum speed for
the 6" cut-off wheels easily exceed the 3,500 rpm of the grinder. At this
point I cannot see any other safety issues beyond those related to using a
bench grinder in the normal fashion.

Failing this, what is the maximum number of hacksaw blades anyone tried
cutting with at once?


Go get one of the cheap tile saws that use a 4 1/2" grinder as the power
source. Replace the diamond blade with a cutoff wheel. Now you have a
flat table with built in cooling, the guide rails will steady the
grinder and give you a 90 degree cut.

I have one here that I used for a long time.

--
Steve W.

On May 27, 1:31*am, "Michael Koblic" wrote:
I have to cut 2 perfectly matching slots in a 5 mm thick flat semicircular
piece of steel, each 15 mm by 5mm.....

Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

"perfectly matching slots" cut by hand???

Try a dish wheel in your angle grinder to gouge out most of the slot,
otherwise this is a job for cold chisels. Use a "cape" chisel to cut
narrow slots on the sides and a regular cold chisel to remove the
center. You still need good eye protection but this is a lot safer
than watching the line closely in a shower of sparks.

Grind the teeth off one edge of a file to make it cut sharp inside
corners and only work one surface at a time. Coarse files are better
for long cuts because the teeth don't fill with chips halfway through
the stroke.

The real answer is to pull yourself out of the 18th century and get
adequate machine tools. The skill to do good work by hand takes a long
apprenticeship to acquire but has almost no commercial value any more,
unless you are an artist. What's your time worth?

I picked auctions and second-hand dealers as my best time-vs-money
tradeoff. Even very old machines can cut metal more quickly and
accurately than I ever could by hand. My time is spent fixing/
restoring them and sharpening cutters. Almost everything I own was
broken when bought and still has problems but they work well enough
most of the time. When I'm stopped by one of their problems I fix it.

I think the minimum satisfactory home or experimental shop equipment
is a mill-drill or small vertical knee mill and a 9" - 12" lathe.
Smaller machines are OK to make models but not for equipment that does
useful work.

I have a Clausing vertical mill, a 10" South Bend lathe, a 4X6 bandsaw
and don't see the need for anything larger, and I built a log
splitter, a sawmill, and bucket loader for my garden tractor with
them. I could put up with a mill-drill for most projects.

A small horizontal mill could substitute if you get a good deal but
then you need a better drill press, and new cutters are much more
expensive than end mills.

Jim Wilkins

"Michael Koblic" wrote:

I have to cut 2 perfectly matching slots in a 5 mm thick flat semicircular
piece of steel, each 15 mm by 5mm.
As per suggestion on another thread I doubled up on the hacksaw blades. This
gave me only just over 2 mm. Cutting this length with a file is not a
prospect I relish. I tried with a 3/32 cut-off wheel in a 4-1/2" grinder.
This works but holding the grinder in exactly right plane is tricky.

Know anyone with a surface grinder? Dress the wheel to 5mm far enough to do
the slot. Carbide em in a bridgeport. I'm assuming this is something
fairly hard.

Wes
--
"Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect
government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home
in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Really? That is interesting! It could solve all kinds of other problems for
me. Canadian Tire have a small tile saw on sale from time to time for $50.

So you did not have any problems with the plastic melting? And you used
standard 4-1/2" cut-off wheels with the water bath? I just had a look at the
Dewalt tile saw manual. They warn strenuously against doing just that...BTW,
what is the rpm on the tile saw - same as an angle grinder?

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

"Steve W." wrote in message
...

Go get one of the cheap tile saws that use a 4 1/2" grinder as the power
source. Replace the diamond blade with a cutoff wheel. Now you have a flat
table with built in cooling, the guide rails will steady the grinder and
give you a 90 degree cut.

I have one here that I used for a long time.

--
Steve W.

On May 28, 4:45*pm, "Robert Swinney" wrote:
Good post, Jim. *I would bet your equipment consist mirrors about 90% of most RCMers.
Bob Swinney

I think it's typical of what we settle on after struggling to work
metal by hand, then buy undersized, inadequate machines because the
good ones look so shockingly expensive. I bought a 6" Sears lathe
first, and tried milling on it and a drill press. An adequate lathe or
mill doesn't really cost more than a motorboat, ATV, snowmobile or
HDTV and they hold their value much better. At least that's my excuse,
they are "investments".

Michael, that's where you may be headed.

Jim Wilkins

I see I managed to filter off Jim's post inadvertently, so I guess I have to
respond "second-hand".

"Robert Swinney" wrote in message
...
Good post, Jim. I would bet your equipment consist mirrors about 90% of
most RCMers.

Bob Swinney
"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message
...
"perfectly matching slots" cut by hand???

***Perfection in this case being in the eye of the beholder...

Try a dish wheel in your angle grinder to gouge out most of the slot,
otherwise this is a job for cold chisels. Use a "cape" chisel to cut
narrow slots on the sides and a regular cold chisel to remove the
center. You still need good eye protection but this is a lot safer
than watching the line closely in a shower of sparks.

***Never thought of chisels. Will they work on 5mm thick plate?

Grind the teeth off one edge of a file to make it cut sharp inside
corners and only work one surface at a time. Coarse files are better
for long cuts because the teeth don't fill with chips halfway through
the stroke.

***See, this is the sort of thing I would not have thought of and that makes
perfect sense

The real answer is to pull yourself out of the 18th century and get
adequate machine tools. The skill to do good work by hand takes a long
apprenticeship to acquire but has almost no commercial value any more,
unless you are an artist. What's your time worth?

***I am hoping to join the 18th century sometimes next year. The time
value - at present little. That may change.

I picked auctions and second-hand dealers as my best time-vs-money
tradeoff. Even very old machines can cut metal more quickly and
accurately than I ever could by hand. My time is spent fixing/
restoring them and sharpening cutters. Almost everything I own was
broken when bought and still has problems but they work well enough
most of the time. When I'm stopped by one of their problems I fix it.

I think the minimum satisfactory home or experimental shop equipment
is a mill-drill or small vertical knee mill and a 9" - 12" lathe.
Smaller machines are OK to make models but not for equipment that does
useful work.

I have a Clausing vertical mill, a 10" South Bend lathe, a 4X6 bandsaw
and don't see the need for anything larger, and I built a log
splitter, a sawmill, and bucket loader for my garden tractor with
them. I could put up with a mill-drill for most projects.

A small horizontal mill could substitute if you get a good deal but
then you need a better drill press, and new cutters are much more
expensive than end mills.

I am sure you are right. I am in fact looking. The 9-12" in the lathe
department would be the swing-over-bed? There is a slew of small lathes on
the EBay, 7"x 8-12", all under $600. The bigger machines are out of my
league. The other issue is space.

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

On May 28, 6:27*pm, "Michael Koblic" wrote:
I see I managed to filter off Jim's post inadvertently, so I guess I have to
respond "second-hand".

"Robert Swinney" wrote in message

Bob Swinney
"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message
... cold chisels...

***Never thought of chisels. Will they work on 5mm thick plate?

Mild steel plate? Sure, as long as you clamp it solidly to something
heavy. You can practice on wood across the grain to get the feel to
cut a constant depth. Chisels are "Armstrong Milling Machines". The
last steel I chiseled was rivet heads on a truck frame, the last wood
was a new transom I fitted onto a neighbor's boat last week. In
neither case did machine tools help. It's a useful skill.

Grind the teeth off one edge of a file to make it cut sharp inside
corners and only work one surface at a time. Coarse files are better
for long cuts because the teeth don't fill with chips halfway through
the stroke.

***See, this is the sort of thing I would not have thought of and that makes
perfect sense

You can buy files with a safe edge for finishing inside corners. The
common types are "hand" and "pillar".
I use them a lot for custom cutouts in electronic control panels.

***I am hoping to join the 18th century sometimes next year. The time
value - at present little. That may change.

This crazy guy is a good source of technical books from the early 20th
century, which is about the state of the art for many of our home
shops today. He has had a better selection in the past but Elements of
Machine Work and Advanced Machine Work are good.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/

I am sure you are right. I am in fact looking. The 9-12" in the lathe
department would be the swing-over-bed? There is a slew of small lathes on
the EBay, 7"x 8-12", all under $600. The bigger machines are out of my
league. The other issue is space.
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

US practice is to specify a lathe by maximum work diameter over the
ways and length of bed. My 10" x 42" lathe can hold a 10" pulley blank
on a face plate but it's limited to stock a bit less than 6" diameter
over the carriage and about 20" long.

If I had the space I'd own a Bridgeport. I passed up a Monarch 10EE
for $2000 because I had no room for it.

Jim Wilkins

Michael Koblic wrote:
Really? That is interesting! It could solve all kinds of other problems for
me. Canadian Tire have a small tile saw on sale from time to time for $50.

So you did not have any problems with the plastic melting? And you used
standard 4-1/2" cut-off wheels with the water bath? I just had a look at the
Dewalt tile saw manual. They warn strenuously against doing just that...BTW,
what is the rpm on the tile saw - same as an angle grinder?


Nope, no problem as long as I kept the water flowing. I would bet the
plastic would melt without coolant. Don't try to cut the notches all in
one pass and let the part cool down a bit and it would reduce the risk
to about zero.

I can't imagine why a company that also make metal cutting tools would
tell you not to buy a cheaper tool to do the same job ;-)

The tile saw I have uses the same grinder that I use for normal use, it
does have a rubber sleeve that keep water out but other than that it's
the same design.

--
Steve W.

Ha! The economics of tools is something I only started appreciating the last
two years.
Canadian Tire is very funny like that. They have obviously acquired a boat
load of various tools they have difficulty shifting. Even heavy discounts
(4-1/2" angle grinder for less than $20) do not seem to help. Then they
start inventing all kinds of gimmicks to sell the stuff - in the case of the
said grinder they made a stand for it to make it into a quasi-chop saw. I
doubt that they sold many.

They have produced a "cutting tool" which is like nothing else. It also does
not sell as judging by the on-going discounts. I had a look at it - it was
quite useless!

There are quite a few other examples.

I sort of looked at the tile saw last time it went on sale (I was cutting
stones at one stage) but dismissed it as my grinder did the same job with a
diamond blade - dry!

To be fair, they do sell some very good stuff and they have a liberal return
policy.

Thanks for the tip.

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC


"Steve W." wrote in message
...
Nope, no problem as long as I kept the water flowing. I would bet the
plastic would melt without coolant. Don't try to cut the notches all in
one pass and let the part cool down a bit and it would reduce the risk to
about zero.

I can't imagine why a company that also make metal cutting tools would
tell you not to buy a cheaper tool to do the same job ;-)

The tile saw I have uses the same grinder that I use for normal use, it
does have a rubber sleeve that keep water out but other than that it's the
same design.

--
Steve W.

Michael Koblic wrote:
Ha! The economics of tools is something I only started appreciating the last
two years.
Canadian Tire is very funny like that. They have obviously acquired a boat
load of various tools they have difficulty shifting. Even heavy discounts
(4-1/2" angle grinder for less than $20) do not seem to help. Then they
start inventing all kinds of gimmicks to sell the stuff - in the case of the
said grinder they made a stand for it to make it into a quasi-chop saw. I
doubt that they sold many.

They have produced a "cutting tool" which is like nothing else. It also does
not sell as judging by the on-going discounts. I had a look at it - it was
quite useless!

There are quite a few other examples.

I sort of looked at the tile saw last time it went on sale (I was cutting
stones at one stage) but dismissed it as my grinder did the same job with a
diamond blade - dry!

To be fair, they do sell some very good stuff and they have a liberal return
policy.

Thanks for the tip.


I have a version of the mini chop saw mounted on the end of the bench.
It's handy for cutting off bolts and all thread type stuff.

You get a square cut and less time gets spent chasing after the small
pieces you just cut off and sent flying into that pile of oily rags!!!

--
Steve W.

On Wed, 28 May 2008 23:17:45 -0700, "Michael Koblic"
wrote:

Ha! The economics of tools is something I only started appreciating the last
two years.
Canadian Tire is very funny like that. They have obviously acquired a boat
load of various tools they have difficulty shifting. Even heavy discounts
(4-1/2" angle grinder for less than $20) do not seem to help. Then they
start inventing all kinds of gimmicks to sell the stuff - in the case of the
said grinder they made a stand for it to make it into a quasi-chop saw. I
doubt that they sold many.

They have produced a "cutting tool" which is like nothing else. It also does
not sell as judging by the on-going discounts. I had a look at it - it was
quite useless!

There are quite a few other examples.

I sort of looked at the tile saw last time it went on sale (I was cutting
stones at one stage) but dismissed it as my grinder did the same job with a
diamond blade - dry!

To be fair, they do sell some very good stuff and they have a liberal return
policy.

Thanks for the tip.
Usta be, back some 50 years, you went to CTC to buy car/bike parts;
then they added fishing tackle. Now they have so many gim-cracks and
gew-gaws, they had to open Partsource to sell anything to do with
automobiles, and the last time I was THERE (because TSC was moving and
had sold out of 3/8" gas line hose and second son was stranded) THEY
wanted 5xprice for a piece. Anybody want a collection of "funny munny"
cause I don't go there no mo!
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

"Gerald Miller" wrote in message
...
Usta be, back some 50 years, you went to CTC to buy car/bike parts;
then they added fishing tackle. Now they have so many gim-cracks and
gew-gaws, they had to open Partsource to sell anything to do with
automobiles, and the last time I was THERE (because TSC was moving and
had sold out of 3/8" gas line hose and second son was stranded) THEY
wanted 5xprice for a piece. Anybody want a collection of "funny munny"
cause I don't go there no mo!

That would ruin a good part of my social life!

Here the choices a
1) CT
2) House of Tools - you have to pick and choose. I am still waiting for two
$5 clamps 2 moths later. OTOH, they are the cheapest suppliers of
threadlockers. YMMV
3) Home Hardware - excellent for fasteners, forget everything else
4) Rona - forget it!
5) Acklands-Grainger - OK if you are a Company and loaded

or, after 46 km drive

5) Home Depot
6) Midland tools - odd shop that. Stock seems endless but when you look for
specifics they seem to be "just out". Good prices though.

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC