Welding Tips and Tricks

Metal cutting blades on a skillsaw type metal saw can be pretty affordable and you can achieve quite a bit with one.

That or a porta bandsaw which depending on size would also allow a fair bit of versatility.



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Porta band is the one saw in my shop that never gets put away. I keep 2 or three different teeth count blades around and even 1 or 2 with the teeth gone, they work great for thin plastics.

What I've found .... porta bands are great addition to the tool room. the porta band will give you the same cut as a lower cost band saw, but quicker. dry cut saw is even quicker. abrasive saws make sparks. no matter which saw you choose, there will be pros and cons.

I want a portaband but I always use my metal chopsaw and angle grinder with cut-off wheel most of the time. I bought the HF portaband but it sucked. Wheels were out of true by 1/8".

i use a fixed band saw for most small stuff. its slow but its quiet and accurate.
for most other stuff its angle grinder, but recently i have a hand held battery powered metal circular saw. handy for cutting sheets etc.

of course clean up with deburring tool and file.

In my opinion, the more options you have the better. I generally use cut off wheels on angle grinder. It’s cheaper to buy 10 wheels online than box stores. My jig saw was kicking back so much, I just use it for wood now. I have cut Freon tanks with it for gas forge tho. You’ve got to really clamp the work down securely. For thicker than 3/8” or so I use a chop saw. If the metal is square I have plywood v-blocks to cut on diamond. Much easier this way. Also, for non ferrous I anneal with propane torch first, even when hack sawing. With any power tools I wear an old style welding mask to keep flying metal out of my eyes. Goggles didn’t prevent this, because angle grinder fan blew dust under it.

Completely off topic but anyone know how I wound up as the OP for this post? :S

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Toggatug wrote: ↑Mon Feb 07, 2022 8:13 pm Completely off topic but anyone know how I wound up as the OP for this post? :S

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typically thats because the original post was deleted or your post was split off from the original thread.