metal chopsaw tour

In this video, I want to explain something about my favorite metal cutting saw

This is just for regular, mostly square, sometimes angled cuts. And that's this metal cutting chop saw here

It's different than our regular woodworking chop saw. So unfortunately, you can't use the kinds of blades and things I'm going to be telling you about here

on a woodworking chop saw because it spins too fast. This is a slower spinning unit

It's meant for cutting metal. It's meant to keep out sparks and little filings of metal out of the motor, so it's going to last a long time

So, as I said, unfortunately, you can't use a woodworking chop saw for this

And this is, but it just, this does just work like a regular woodworking chop saw in that it just chops down and, and cuts metal

Now, you'll notice here that this blade is actually a carbide blade

It's got teeth. it looks like a woodworking blade, but it's actually made for metal

And that's one of the things I want to point out here. A tool like this is normally used with an abrasive wheel

And this would do a decent job. The problem, there's two problems actually

First of all, this sort of thing reduces all the metal in the saw curve to tiny sparks

So it's got to pulverize all that metal, turn it into these sparks, which essentially is kind of like a metal dust when it settles down

So you forcing the machine to do a lot more work It has to actually pulverize all of the metal and that can mean for a slower cut and lots and lots of sparks That not the case with this with this carbide toothed blade because it actually produces shavings of metal So there less pulverization of the cut line

so it's faster, far fewer sparks, and here's another thing too, the diameter of a blade like this

remains consistent, whereas it's abrasive wheel, it wears out too so it slowly gets smaller and smaller and smaller so those are the two

drawbacks lots of sparks limited life the advantages that these are fairly

cheap so that's one good thing but all things considered I recommend you look at

using some sort of a carbide blade for metal cutting because of the advantages

now let me just show you here it's kind of interesting at the back there's a

little tray here in this particular model and it catches all all the shavings

So kind of neat looking. You'll notice they're kind of bluish in color too

and that's because they get fairly hot when the cutting has happened

Now that said, the metal you're cutting, the actual piece that's remaining

stays fairly cool compared with an abrasive wheel. So it stays fairly cool when you're using

the toothed carbide blades. And I'm gonna give you a demonstration of that

This is a piece of three-quarter-inch solid mild steel bar. I've used it for a few different projects

I'm just going to chuck it in here and show you how a cut actually happens

In this particular model, this is a Milwaukee metal cutting saw, you can flip this lever here

That allows you to slide and to take up the slack And then when you flip it over now the threads work and it can really grip too this arrangement will also swivel to one side so if you wanted to create angled cuts

but when it comes to cutting metal you really must use this clamp you might be tempted to hold it

by hand but there's just there's too many forces there's too much of a kickback potential so it's

very important that you actually clamp this down. I'm going to show you a little trick for clamping

extra short pieces in a minute, but right now I'm just going to put on my safety glasses and earmuffs

and we'll make this cut. Now, I know some guys are kind of lax with using safety glasses, and you can

cut wood with a chop saw for years without having anything come near your eye. But when you're

cutting metal, it's another matter. I don't consider these glasses to be optional

at all because there's little pieces of metal flying around. They're hot

I mean, it would be a nightmare if one went into your eyes. So never use a machine like this without a pair of these

And it's pretty loud too. So make sure you protect your ears too. But anyway, let's fire this thing up

Make some sparks and you can see how it cuts. So here you can see the piece of three quarter inch solid steel rod that was cut

The cut is excellent. It's smooth, crisp edges. It's, I would say, it's verging on hot. It's still cool enough to pick up

So it not if this had been cut with an abrasive wheel it would be way too hot to touch And the sparks would have been enormously more than you saw so really great results it works in solids hollows all shapes as long as the piece of metal can get into the clamp

and it can take quite a width as you can see and this is the machine i like to use most often for regular sorts of cutting

so i'd like to leave you with one little tip before i finish up and that's how to cut

small pieces of metal. This is a piece that I'd made up for a project I'm working on it

It's scrap now, but let's just say that I wanted to cut off, you know, a sixteenth of an inch and eighth of an inch off the bottom

Of course, I can't hold this by hand. It's too small and we're dealing with a metal saw anyway, so it needs to be clamped

Look what happened. If I put this in here to make this cut like this and I advance this and then I start to turn. Well, look what happens

It's not going to hold it reliably. This setup, by the way, is pretty common to other brands of chop saws

So what I'm about to show you now applies across the board. But let's say I just wanted to cut off this much

And it's just a little bit off the end. What I do is I take another piece of metal

This is the same width as the one. In fact, this piece I made from this chunk of steel

And I just put it in here like this. So now this piece of metal keeps this swiveling jaw parallel with the back one and I'm free to tighten it right up

And that's as solid as a rock. It's as solid as if it was a continuous piece

It's just a little trick for when you have to nibble off bits of metal on small pieces