I knew yesterday that the weather was going to be good, and made the decision that if I felt up to it today, I would try to get a little clearing up done.
Over the months, a few good friends off this site have been dropping me off bits of metal that require recycling, from lengths of ali flat bar to a very large lump of round cast iron.
This is the pile I have to work with. The big plastic box it is all sitting on is about 5ft long, so you can see just how much material I have to recycle.
Because it was going to be nice weather, I decided to open the bottom door to my storage and metal prep area and sit outside while the power hacksaw did it's work.
This is really the first time I had used this saw in anger since I had installed it last year, and had only cut up a couple of small steel bars and a chunk of brass with it. The big cast iron bar was really the first bit of hard work it had ever done, and I found that the air strut is in fact too strong and held the pressure off the cut. So if you can see the lift handle, I put an angle plate and the first cast iron cutoff on there, and that gave the perfect downwards pressure on the blade. Taking just 15 mins to cut thru over 3" of cast iron.
I will make up a proper pressure weight I can hang on there sometime in the future.
A close up of the blade half way thru the cast bar. Here I am cutting off flywheel width sized blanks.
After I had finished for the day, I checked out the blade. It was still razor sharp, so I now know the half dozen spare blades I bought are going to last a l-o-n-g time.
This isn't all the metal cut up, I still have the same amount of flat steel bar to do. A very welcome addition to my dwindling steel stock.
So I would just like to thank the friends who gave me all this raw material, not just for the metal, but getting me out working hard for the first time in many months.
Time for a shower, something to eat, then a well earned rest.
Bogs
