brass came

A few years ago, when I was doing alot of Brass camed panels for entry doors, I bought a custom made blade, don't remember the tooth now, but it was alot, on a 7 1/4" circular blade for a Delta chop/miter saw.

WAYYYY too much hp for the cames, even though there was alot of 3/8" U came involved, it was still too much saw for the job, it was a plain steel blade, not carbide either.

There was a small chop saw on the market for a time from Hoy's, they used small 4" blades from England, they got dull and loaded up, but the little motor on that was too weak for the job.

I turned to a dremel type rotary tool when I got tired of putting a piece down, forming/measuring and then walking "over there" and cutting then coming back and fitting, then do it again for the next piece. Now I move 90 degrees to my left and cut it with a rotary tool, then put it in place. Too much time walking back and forth to a bigger saw, and a hacksaw across the leaves on the face of the brass will deform it unless you clamp it in a miter box, but too many of my cuts don't fit the typical angles of a miter box either.

Whether or not and what scratched the bevels on a job, I have no idea, but there were brass particles at my helpers table so I assumed it was from the brass, if not , Oh well, I still had to re-bevel the entire window.

Don't know all the ins and outs of every little piece of material, but what works for me is the fiber cut off wheel on a rotary tool, Dremel or other. If I run it faster, the wheel is not in contact with the metal as long, and loading is reduced, but temperature of the piece does go up, if there is discoloration, that is where I am soldering anyway, and it cleans off.

By the way, annealed some brass, twisted it, tied it in a simple over hand knot, and wrapped it around a piece of bent lamp panel like stiff copper foil , worked just fine, cleaned it up with a green scrub pad, and damp cloth with whiting , didn't have to rub that hard either. So it will do what the copper did just fine.

Reply to
Javahut
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I have a small steel table saw. The surface is about 15"x12". I've converted it to a came saw with a sliding table and cantilevered 6" arm.I use Inland "carbon tuff" very thin kerf toothed (is this a word?) blades. They make 4",5" and 6". It cuts lead,brass and aluminum. If cut lots of 1/16" walled "hard brass" U channel with it. Jarmac is a company that makes this type of saw.

Reply to
vic

Assuming red or yellow brass: According to Machinery's Handbook (23rd edition), cutting speed for cold drawn red or yellow brass is 250 feet/minute with a High Speed Steel blade. With a Dremel blade diameter of 1", that would make an optimum speed of 955 RPM. With your average Dremel cranking away at 15000, you can see now why they burn up.

And you're right...that would put the speed on a 6" blade down to 160 RPM.

If you have to do a lot of this stuff, maybe you could connect one of those Dremel flexible shaft attachments to a low speed motor. There's a lot of

1045 RPM motors out there. Your 1" or 1/2" Dremel blade should do a lot better there.

Of course, all this is assuming that a Dremel blade is actually High Speed Steel and not stainless or some other crap.

I was just looking through my Enco book, and found a little item I had forgotten about. They're called 'slitting saws'. They range in size from

2" to 8" in diameter, widths from 1/16 to 1/8 and range in price from $7 to $50. Normally, they are mounted on an arbor and used in a milling machine, but they could be adapted to other saws/motors.

Look at

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and do a search for 'slitting saws'

Hope all this rambling helps.

Reply to
Bill Browne

Bill, I work with metal also, brass, bronze and copper, in a lathe,mill, and a drill press, but I also work with brass cames, which is hard brass, and thin. The hardness does not lend itself well to a saw, even with small teeth, and the thickness being so fine, bends and flexes under a decent saw. I have tried a jewelers saw, but with such fine blades they don't hold up long.

With a project, the desire is generally to not waste time, and hand saws, while cutting well, are notoriously slow. Hence, the search for the best method of working with these metals.

If you can come up with a good saw for hard metal cames, brass, copper and zinc, you can market it to a great many studios, worldwide. But as I said earlier, Hoy's used to sell a saw, for several years, but it wasn't feasable. and if your going to make a saw, make a bending jig too, then you could really make some money!!

Now I am going to see what these "slitting saws" are, I just knew these was a tool I don't have somewhere.

Reply to
Javahut

Hmmmmmm. Describe this bending jig to me. While you're doing that, I'll go check my motor supply.

Reply to
Bill Browne

I wonder if you might fond something that would work at Micro Mark.

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the one of the rail cutters might work or...
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's a fun catalog to look through anyway. Chunk Kiesling

Reply to
chunk

Looked around some more and this miter/cutoff machine looks good

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Maybe the one of the rail cutters might work or...>
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> It's a fun catalog to look through anyway.>

Reply to
chunk

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> Chunk

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> Maybe the one of the rail cutters might work or...> >>

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>> > It's a fun catalog to look through anyway.> >

I see what you are getting at, but, and a big "but" it is, the railroad tools are very small, and those rail cutters are small too, the nibbler needs a flat surface to work, not 3d like in a came. As far as the saw with

2" Hss blade, look at this one,
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andtell me the difference. Bet BOTH are made in the same Chinese factory. Butthat wheel would get a workout and I would spend all my time changingblades. Vic mentioned a saw, or one similar to a Jarmac, that is the blade I use on my small power miter box, about a 4" blade, great for zinc, gets dull real fast with brass. This set up is what led me to try a custom made hss blade on my Delta Power miter box, which was downright scary. Too much power, and too fast for the material.

All these tools and experiments led me to the Enkay abrasive wheels and the Harbor freight rotary tool, which is what I use today, I can work faster with that set up than with anything else, and adjust angles on the fly!

Reply to
Javahut

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