Can You Cut Steel On A "Wood Cutting" Bandsaw?

hey you two welcome back to darker metals in today's video I'm going to talk a little bit about band saws now some of you may have seen the video that we did back in October of 2015 where we made the iron cross here this is a forged piece but before you put this in the Forge you cut it a lot of people use a hacksaw we use the horizontal metal cutting bandsaw and I've been wanting to get a vertical bandsaw for quite a while these years really handy I looked at a couple from Lowe's and Home Depot and some of the other big-box stores and for a nine inch model that was halfway decent you're looking to spend about a hundred and eighty dollars um this bandsaw I was fortunate enough to find on Craigslist this is a central machine a bandsaw it's the model that was manufactured in Taiwan and they made thousands of them and just painted of different colors for different companies so this is one of the old versions it's got the solid cast base it's extremely heavy it weighs about 175 pounds and I don't even know if Harbor Freight has this model anymore I think what they have now is a lot cheaper this is a full 14 inch bandsaw I picked it up for $20 more than what I would have spent on a nine inch version at one of the big box stores and what I really like about this is the gentleman who bought it wanted it for a project and like so many do-it-yourselfers sometimes you find out that you're overwhelmed and what you're trying to take on and you hire someone else to do it and if you bought a tool maybe it sits in a box for a decade or so so this was brand-new still in the box manufactured back in 2001 and I picked this up for $20 more than what I would have spent on a new one made of plastic that only had a nine inch capacity but the first thing I noticed is that it is this big sticker on the side it says wood cutting and a lot of these that came out of hyewon say that but it's really not the band saws decision on whether as a wood cutting or a metal cutting saw that's all up to the blade after putting the bandsaw together I installed the blade that it came with from the factory and this is a wood cutting blade you could see don't know how well you can see let me see I can zoom in just a bit for you here you can see how far apart the teeth are and that's usually an indication of what kind of a blade you're working with the closer together the teeth are the finer the cut and if you're using a bio metal blade you can use it on just about any kind of material you want so let me back out here this is just 3/4 ply I still need to track down that rattle I think it's got something to do with the belts but you get a nice decent cut with a brand new fresh blade what some people don't know this is aluminum that's actually piece to an old road sign I picked up at a scrapyard I used it for a project and rather than just throwing it in the scrap bin now I can use it for a demo if you go really easy a wood cutting blade being steel will cut aluminum you just can't force it through you so here we are folks this is the package from the blade that I'm going to be installing in the saw and as you can see cuts ferrous metals non-ferrous metals nonmetallic materials which is a it one thing that caught my eye is asbestos you can technically cut asbestos with this at 400 feet per minute which is one of the ratings for the saw I don't know anyone in their right mind who would want to cut asbestos on a bandsaw you know it just gives you an idea of the different safety standards in different countries this blade happened to be made in India all you need to do really is pay attention to the feed rates how fast the blade is moving to cut different materials so this one C is 24 teeth per inch it's the length that I need for this particular saw I'm going to open it up and install it off-camera and we're going to try to cut some steel let's start off I cut to something fairly thin this is just a sheet metal sheet steel next let's cut a piece of a typical shelving material this is just a hair thinner than eighth inch I could have raised my foot up a little bit more but it went through all right all right YouTube so if you've ever been in the market for a bandsaw and wondered if the wood cutting bandsaw will cut metal in a pinch absolutely it depends all on bandsaw blade that you're using the last thing that you saw me cut was half-inch thick steel and as you can see you know it's not it's not as clean to some cutting methods but it is halfway decent it's nice and smooth once it's deferred it's just as good as the horizontal bandsaw that I have with the flood cooling the trick is with this type of a bandsaw you can't force the metal through the blade you have to really let the blade do all the work applying a minimal amount of pressure and that's really the secret to make sure that your blade stays sharp and you get a decent cut one of the downsides of a vertical bandsaw versus a horizontal the horizontal band saws are typically gravity-fed where the weight of the machine itself just slowly cuts through the metal and it gives you a nice even pace and it typically makes a straighter cut than trying to do something freehand on a vertical model that's really the only downside sometimes it is difficult to cut in a straight line with something like this especially when you're going through thicker material but I think you get the idea that this is something that is possible and it is an option for you and I hope you learned something and enjoyed the video until the next video this has been Jeff the darkroom metals and I'll see you again soon you you

Channel: Jeffrey Santo

Views: 170,706

Rating: 4.8701825 out of 5

Keywords: Band Saw, Bandsaw, Bandsaw Blade, Wood Cutting, Metal Cutting, Metal Cutting Bandsaw, Vertical Bandsaw, Harbor Freight Bandsaw, Harbor Freight, Jeffrey Santo, Dana Cole, Vered Brandman, Darkmoon Metals

Id: jJJBYPK3WYk

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2016