Heavy Duty Chop Saw

[ndemge]

I'm looking for a chop saw I can't kill.

I make Mortar Racks for Fireworks, and the chop saw gets quite the workout.

Had a 10amp Rigid, after one night of cutting HDPE pipe, you could tell it was fealing the pain.

So we put a 12" blade on my 15" 14" milwaulke Chopsaw, This thing is a cutting BEAST! BUT, it is made to be an abrassive saw, so the blade guard does not drop all the way down, making this a VERY dangrous machine to use.


Looking for something heavy duty, 220v would be fine too, but it has got to have a safe blade guard, as it will have over 1,000 cuts at a sitting sometimes.

[Rich]

My personal favorite is the 15amp milwaukee - any of their models are good.

[roger g]

Well I just bought a 10 inch 13 amp mitre saw from a local Canadian company. I should have bought one years ago but was too cheap to do it. Now that I'm doing some renoavating I decided it was time. The one problem, and it should not have been a problem because I knew better, is that the 10 in saw will only cut about a 6 inch board. The parts I want to cut are about 6 1/2 across. Damn! The 12 inch saw was more than I wanted to pay and the sliding ones are way too much. I figure by adding a 2 by 4 to the table of the saw I can cut the required pieces. I can't lower the blade or push back the fence but I can raise the table by adding a 2 by 4 or 2 by 6. I usually am away for a week or two at a time at the reno house so I'll try my addition in a few days. Either way the saw is awesome . I have to add some extensions on either side to really make it work great. When I think of all the mickey mouse things I used to do to get angles................ but that was before mitre saws and a little after axes and bucksaws.


roger

[Tom R]

You can also just 'pivot' the side of the board closest to you 'upward', while holding the 'back' against the fence, as you're cutting. The 'balance' point would usually be midway between the blade and the end of the fence for a short board, and closer towards the end of the fence for a longer board. (Your hand should never, ever go past the 'end' of the fence, or you'll end up 'pivoting' in two directions at once).

[roger g]

EXcellent idea!!!!!!!!!!!! I like it. I don't have a table saw (strange but true) so I think I will figure out the right angle and get someone to rip a piece of wood with that angle to lay on the table of the saw.
Thanks Tom. It's made my day.


roger

[Rich]

Good advice Tom.. well not so good if you're wanting to be safe :) I've done it before on 15" shelving and my 10" milwaukee can just barely make it by pivoting it all the way up.

[Tom R]

Roger,

Glad the idea helps, and you're idea about the 'bevel-board' is better yet (much safer and more accurate). Hey, we could be the 'Brainstorm Brothers'!!


Rich,

Yes, I should have stressed the 'safety issue' a little more. It's a little bit on the 'tricky' side. The main thing is to find the 'balance' point first. A 'dry run' before actually cutting will help find it.

[roger g]

Safety is one of the reasons I don
t like table saws. Many years ago I put my fingers into a planer. The middle finger on my right hand is now the same length as the others. It came off in thousands of little pieces of meat and bone. Since then I've always been partial to radial arm saws and things where at least one hand is always accounted for.

roger

[Tom R]

Ouch, that's a shame, but in one sense, you're probably lucky it wasn't a lot worse. If you don't mind, tell us what happened, it may 'save' someone else. Horror stories, though painful, can be very 'enlightening'.

[mjpliv]

I was using a 3 HP shaper once with a cutter head which we clamped 3 matched steel cutter blades into. I was feeding some pine through and the wood bound on a big knot. One of the blades snapped off. I can still hear the sound of of that blade whistling by my ear like a bullet. We dug it out of a wall about 20 feet behind me.

[roger g]

I was trying to plane a verysmall piece of wood about 8 inches long. Everytime I pushed it into the blade the wood would stop. I couldn't figure out why.( The piece was too short and the piece would drop a hair and hit the the table the other side of the blades. Of course I didn't know this at the time) I wasn't using a push stick because the piece was small and needed some down pressure to keep it on the blades. I was using the flat of my hand to push and to keep pressuure down. Anyways, it kept on stopping and I got mad and did it fast. It stopped the piece of wood again but my hand went over the side and my fingers went into the blades. It actually got all three middle fingers but the middle being the longest got the worst. The fourth finger got badly scalped and the index finger got nicked.
It's like any accident. A moment of misjudgement can have disasterous effects. Many people die from minor mistakes .

roger

[Tom R]

Thanks for the story, Roger, must have been and probably still is, very 'traumatizing'. Like I say, glad it wasn't any worse than it was.

You're story will help the next person (maybe me) think twice. I don't know any numbers, but I suspect that is probably the cause of most 'accidents' on all the machines, a 'short' piece of wood. Better to use a longer piece, do the 'operation', then crosscut it. Easy to say now.

[roger g]

A funny thing happened a few years after the accident. It was when infra red cameras were just coming out to show heat loss in buildings and things like that. I was at a traade show (love trade shows) where they were demonstrating the camera pointing it at people smoking cigarettes then looking at a TV monitor to see all the hot spots on the person. Just for the fun of it, I stuck my hand infront of the camera then turned to look at the monitor. The salesman and I looked in shock at my hand on the screen which only showed me with 4 digits. Being right handed, I automatically stuck my right hand in front of the camera not even thinking of my shortened finger. We both looked at my hand and then at the 4 fingered hand on the screen. WE were stunned. The poor guy thought he had problems with his unit. As you probably know that damaged parts of the body feel the cold mainly because the blood flow isn't the same anymore. I t turned out the the adjustment setting on the camera was just enough to cancel out my slightly cooler finger.
To look at my hand you would be hard pressed to notice anything if you looked at the palm side other than the 3 middle figers are all the same length whereas they are different lengths on my left hand. From the other side of the hand you willnotice that the middle finger is missing the nail and is slightly fatter at the end. I know this is funny but a lot of people (women as well) think it looks like (with a bit of imagination)a small penis. I said it was funny didn't I!


roger

[Rich]

LOL.. that's funny.
I had my dad working with me on a project in the mountains a few years back. Colder than cold with all kinds of snow. We wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible so we were working some 19 and 20 hour days.. 4am to midnight on the night in question. We were cutting some pine trim and he stuck his hand on my side (I was feeding) of the blade .. being tired and not thinking. Well I wasn't thinking either .. thinking he might be just holding his thumb there instead of pushing on it. Well I flipped the board to put the good side against the fence. Thumb went right into the blade. Tore it pretty good.
Needless to say we called it a night. I figured the next day I'd send him home after he woke up. I also figured we would sleep in to give him a little more rest. Well he was up at 4am wondering why the hell we weren't up and ready to work :)
He's a work horse. We were a bit more careful around the saw from then on.

[Rich]

Your story reminded me of when I was working in a sawmill. The building we had was probably smaller than it should've been but it's what we had. The headrig ran 12' doubled sided (toothed) bandsaws.. these things were huge .. about 14" across from tooth to tooth and the teeth were about 1.5" long. I did about every job in there from tailing saws, to feeding them.. well this one day I happened to be tailing the gang saw. It can get pretty hectic when the feeder gets behind. Anyway - the headrig is about 10' from where I sit tailing the gang. I'm going pretty good trying to catch the feeder up and I hear the headrig start to whine. Before I know it the headrig has run a log and the carriage into the blade and it was coming my way. The way the headrig is setup is the blade, of course, runs up and down on pulleys .. the teeth of the blade are, of course, pointed along the length of the log. Where the gang tailer sits the headrig, as stated, is about 10' away but only about 2' in front of the tailer. The blade ended up going over the carriage and about that same 2' right in front of me.. I was ducked under the table.. right across my table and ended up running into the metal side of the building. The metal siding was in some bad shape after that one. We ended up leaving it that way for quite awhile as a reminder. Scared the hell outta me.
Sorry for the long post.. and for the round about way of the story.
I was using a 3 HP shaper once with a cutter head which we clamped 3 matched steel cutter blades into. I was feeding some pine through and the wood bound on a big knot. One of the blades snapped off. I can still hear the sound of of that blade whistling by my ear like a bullet. We dug it out of a wall about 20 feet behind me.