junk shop find

[BarryF]

I like the little power hacksaw found in the Junk Shop. Here in the UK we had a similar saw made by Kennedy in the 50's, takes a standard hacksaw blade.

I use standard 12" bi-metal blades, these will cut a 2" steel bar. You will see in the picture that only about half the blade is used, so when blunt just "cut" it in half (I use my grinding wheel) and use the other part.

Regards from the United Kingdom

 

[PeteH]

WRT drilling the blades... how about spot-annealing them where the hole is to go ? Two ways come to mind:

Heat up a piece of steel rod red-hot and press it to the spot where you intend to drill.

Or chuck a flat-ended piece of drill rod ("silver steel") or the unfluted stub of a drill bit into the drillpress, and bring it down onto the blade until it heats up.

It would, of course, depend on the kind of steel they're made of --- if it's air-hardening it might not do so well.

 

[FanMan]

As requested, I finally made a video. Here I'm cutting a piece of aluminum to make a bracket for my Z-axis DRO: