Fretsaw

You may find the throat a bit big so place a sheet of thin ply underneath when cutting thin brass

Ken,

For metal, use piercing saw blades instead of the standard fretsaw blades which are coarser pitch and meant for wood. It states that it accepts plain end blades and piercing saw blades are normally the same length as fretsaw blades.

You might have some problems with the speed for metal and plastics. I note that its slowest speed is 400 strokes per minute, or almost 7 strokes per second, which seems a bit fast. You are likely to melt plastic at that speed which will give you a very untidy cut. Also, I'm not sure how the average piercing saw blade will hold out at that speed when cutting metal - with normal hand sawing methods, you probably don't get much over two strokes per second. You might have to keep your rate of feed down to keep the heat down and prolong the life of the blade.

Jim.

"Ken Wilson" wrote in news:etc088$239$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

Ken and Trev both give good advice,

From the same supplier I have ...

Which is a slightly less expensive version of the saw you highlighted, the only differences I can see is that the more expensive version having a higher depth of cut and minimum lower speed.

I'm very happy with mine, for both wood and soft metal and have no doubt the version you're looking at will be equally as good. As an aside I very highly recommend Axminster as suppliers.