Chop say question

If this is an abrasive saw, not a woodworking chop saw, your wheel is glazed and/or loaded. Dress it with a dressing stick (or in a pinch, an old bench grinder wheel) and it'll be good as new.

A coarse silicon carbide dressing stick costs less than $5.

Agree totally with first reply. Take a close look at the edge of the wheel. I'll bet it is rounded or of a veee shape instead of nice and square (straight across). In my experience this condition can be caused by cutting very wide stock, let's say anything over about 1/2" thick by about 3 or 4 inches wide with the stock laying down in the vise on it's wide side. The wheel does not like to be contacting a lot of stock at any one time. Once I make several cuts in a 1" thick by 5 inch wide bar. I finally gave up and used my old reciprocating power hack saw. Another thing that can cause this problem is if you are forcing the wheel into the work crooked. This causes wear on the SIDES of the wheel, so it has to cut more and more material as it goes down through the work as the sides contact the unremoved metal. In this case, toss the wheel and start all over, making sure alignment is correct and that nothing is loose under the wheel.

Pete Stanaitis

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stryped wrote:

But I have bought a new abraisve wheel and it still cuts bad. (It is meant to be a chop saw by the way. It is not a miter saw.)

I guess it is running the wrong way round. :-)

Nick

If it does, you should see two covers, likely round black plastic with a screw driver slot, at 180 degrees from each other that hold the works that retain the brushes. I think my Sears saw uses brushes.

Real hardware stores still stock brushes. McMaster Carr if not.

Had to shim the brushes in a chip conveyor motor last night to limp it along until I can order new brushes.

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

By the way, I would really like a bandsaw, but the one I bought several years ago at TSC would not cut straight no matter what I did. I went through two before I sent it back and got my current chop saw.

Are they still that was. (The cheaper models?)

Someone stole my chop saw a few years ago. I still thank them. I bought the $149 HF band saw. So far, it has worked flawlessly, except for a couple of adjustments here and there. I built a rolling cart for it, and a wing to catch drops, and bought some roller stands to feed the metal. Mine is accurate enough for what I want it to do, you may need a more exacting model.

In my lifetime, I've worn out about five chop saws. They in turn, have worn out my hearing. I have had metal plucked from my corneas twice, and was wearing safety glasses both times. I would never ever own a chop saw again, but that's just me.

With the band saw, you set it, and walk away. If you want multiple cuts, you can stack together multiples and it cuts more at once. It's not as quick, but there's far less noise, smoke, sparks, and flying debris. Miter cuts are better on band saws because the blade drift/deflection is less.

YMMV

Steve

If the brushes are that close to gone you should hear the speed changing and odd sounds even when not loaded.

All cheap import bandsaws are "kits" and will need to be properly opened up and cleaned out (they like to leave casting sand inside the gearboxes with not enough grease to properly mix with) and the blade guides & alignment fine tuned before use - nature of the beast when they have to meet everyone else's sales price. They send the raw materials, you have to turn it into a working saw.

If you are going to chop lots of metal production style, look into Cold Saws. Looks like a really stout 12" to 16" woodworking style miter saw, fine spaced but heavy toothed carbide tipped saw blade, turns rather slow, serious horsepower (2 or more). Doesn't abrade the metal like a chop saw, actually cuts it.

Cold Saws are /not/ cheap, but they last. Fairly quiet, no drama, slot appears... You can't just put that blade in a woodworking saw, way too flimsy, way too fast. And plastic blade guards don't deal with red-hot chips well.

Blades for them are not cheap, but they are sharpenable many times and new teeth are brazed on and sharpened to match when they pop off. But don't let too many teeth fall off before sending it in for rework, it's a cascade effect failure - if you lose two or three teeth in a row you can suddenly catch the edge and zip them all off...

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Well ... that depends. Back when they were referred to as the $200 horizontal/vertical bandsaw (and prices were already falling below that), I got one from MSC which turned out a lot better than others that I have seen.

The motor can run a long time and stay cool, while it is common for the original motor to burn up on a long cut.

The blade guide assemblies on many of them are bent-up mild steel, while the ones on this were forgings to which the eccentric-mounted ball bearing guides were assembled. The difference is that chips and thick welds on the sheet-metal ones will bend the metal thus loosening the adjustments over time. This one holds the original factory adjustment and still works fine after about ten years of use.

*All* of them have a blade tensioning adjustment which takes pretty much all of your strength to tighten to get it to the minimum tension -- so until you learn this, you will get your blade wandering all over the place. :-)

And -- MSC thought enough of this one to put their name on it, which I think they would not have, had they sold the cheapest version.

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And, of course, you can get bandsaw blade stock in rolls, and if you have a blade welder, or make a jig for silver-soldering the blades, you can save a lot of money over time.

Enjoy, DoN.