Stupid Air Tool Question

How about this one?

I'm gonna guess that a circular saw requires a lot more power than nailers, drills or sanders. The CFM requirements would be enormous, and would probably require 1 inch line, which is impractical.

How about this one?

"I'm not grown up enough to be so old!"

On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 02:03:28 -0500, the blithe spirit "B.B." clearly indicated:

Due to the high torque needed and their low efficiency, any experimentals probably took 50 CFM to run.

.-. Life is short. Eat dessert first! ---

Try 100 CFM@100 PSI

The above link closely resembles a pneumatic keel saw used at Stephens Marine where I worked at in the '60's. It closely resembled a 7" skill saw, only used about an 18" or so blade. Huge keels up to about 8" wide and over 70'long were sawed after lamination to get the curve correct. I remember one old boy sawing for two full days on one keel in 1964... At least they WERE made and used... wished I did have a pic.. it was impressive. Bill in Phx.

I have seen large (maybe 12-14") air powered circular saws the move along a track used to cut through concrete walls. Driven by one of those big trailer mounted compressors like they use to run jackhammers. The track was lagged to the wall, and the saw moved along it via the operator cranking a handle. Gave a nice clean, straight cut.Air power seemed to make sense for the application, as the saw blade (I assume it was a diamond blade) was run with a heavy constant water spray, and the operators worked, wearing boots, standing in 6" or so of water.

I have a real nice little one that uses a three inch blade , it is designed for trimming the lifting eye tabs off of wing sins, its the cutest little thing , don't use it , but since when is that a requirement for owning a tool

Your collection of tools are not complete until you own...

Wayne D.

Holy crap! That's one of the manliest things I've ever seen! I'm gonna put a poster of it on my wall--between to Bigfoot (the truck) and Betty Page. (not a truck) Thanks! (:

I had a catalog in the '80s that had several models in it, along with air routers. The CFM requirements were such that you'd either have to have a trailer-mounted screw compressor or an industrial air system. In other words, not really a portable item. If I remember correctly, there wasn't much of a weight advantage over a Skil 77, either. There were some smaller trim saws with a lot lower air requirements, those could be useful under the right conditions, something along the lines of 3" blades. Might be good for trimming fiberglass flash on boat or custom car moldings. They had air saber saws, too.

Stan