The Ultimate Guide To Metal Cutting Saws. From Hobby to Pro!

hey i'm chris from make everything and today i'm going to be giving you the ultimate guide to metal cutting saws i'm going to run through everything from horizontal band saws vertical band saws porta bands metal cutting circular saws metal cutting chop saws and everything in between every price range from entry level at a hundred dollars all the way up to pro level in the six to seven thousand dollar range i'll tell you which ones you want to start your business and which ones can help you further the work that you're doing with special features and special abilities that make fabricating that much better let's get started [Music] [Applause] alright so in my shop i do a ton of metal work and there is a lot of different specialty tools especially when it comes to cutting metal that make that process a lot easier just by having the right stuff now there are a lot of entry level saws on the market that are kind of labeled as like one and done do everything saws so we're gonna start with those and sort of work our way up from the entry level chopping saws uh up through the other different models and the different ways that you can spend a little bit more money but maybe get a lot more tools so let's head over to the bench all right so i've got three chopping saws here on the bench and the one that you may be most familiar with is over here this is an abrasive cut-off saw this uses a 14-inch abrasive wheel to cut metal it's about a 4000 rpm saw and funny story about this one in particular this is a buffalo power tool saw made in 1985 this was my dad saw this was the first metal cutting saw i ever used i have vivid memories using this when i was in middle school in high school to make art projects so this is a sentimental saw to me and i still enjoy using it every once in a while the other one we've got is this evolution 10-inch sort of multi-material saw now these have been marketed on and off over the last couple of years as like the one and done saw they have these videos and photos of people cutting two by fours filled with nails and it's a little bit of a gimmick i will say though the saw cuts a lot of material and it's got its uses and then we've got this 14 inch larger more professional grade steel max saw also commonly referred to as an evolution saw which uses a carbide tip blade and will cut materials really well let's take a deep dive into each one of these saws and i'll explain the features all right so these abrasive saws are really great for cutting a large variety of material and these are probably what you're most used to seeing at like a big box store like home depot a ton of different brands makes these and you can cut you know steel studs you can cut tubing solid all that stuff now the benefit of a saw like this is because it's got an abrasive wheel you obviously can use it the same way you'd use an abrasive wheel on an angle grinder this saw doesn't care if your material is hardened or soft like aluminum it will generally cut all of it it doesn't cut aluminum super well because it gums up the wheel but if you're maybe a blacksmith or you're doing metal work in that way when you're going to have hard material this is probably your best choice cutting hardened material with any of the other saws that we're going to talk about today is going to severely impact the life of the blade and on a saw like this while it is going to abrade this faster it's not really going to care and it's still going to cut through it pretty well i'm going to make a cut with this so you can see what happens when you make a cut with an abrasive saw and then we're going to sort of work backwards from here because this is probably the most aggressive saw in my arsenal and you'll be able to see why i really choose to not use this and i really try to opt out and use something else whenever possible so you can see tons of sparks when we cut with a saw like this now this is a major issue from a safety standpoint because those sparks are going to disperse around your shop and especially if you're working in like a home garage shop and you've got flammables around like gasoline or lacquer or finish these things are super dangerous so i really try to use this only when i absolutely have to and that's why i opt to use some of these carbide tip saws that i'm going to show you now so moving away from the abrasive saw you've got these carbide tooth saws now both of these have similar style blades this one is you know this multi-material now the problem with saws like these is that if you cut something out of the realm of these blades you can pretty much immediately destroy them for instance this saw somebody cut some stainless with and this blade is totally shot so i'm not going to be able to show you how this one cuts but i will say the difference between these two is obviously this one is more geared like a woodworking saw where it's got a slide and you can miter it by just rotating this thing even though you know it does kind of get jammed up over time now if you want a miter with this saw you actually have to loosen this fence and rotate it which can be a little disorienting because the saw stays in one place and then you have to rotate your material so if you bolt this saw down to a bench sometimes you're going to have material kind of going way out of bounds and it's not really going to work with an outfeed they both cut the same way they use a carbide tooth in order to cut away the material and they make very little if any spark so i'm going to make a cut with this larger saw like i said the blades are the same and the effect is going to be about the same and you can see the difference in the cut quality and the lack of sparks now these saws are also commonly referred to as cold cutting saws they're not really a cold saw but they do leave pretty much an instantly cool and burr free edge albeit there can be no like a little bit of sharpness because this cut is so precise now again if you wanted to miter this you would actually have to loosen this fence and then you can miter it in order to cut angles and all that so again this uses a carbide blade and while these things are really great they're not really universal in terms of what you can do with a single blade so now if you have a blade like this which is situated for mild steel this will cut hundreds and hundreds of pieces of material before this blade is dull but let's say you're in a pinch and you need to cut a piece of stainless one cut and a piece of stainless with a blade like this can ruin it and then this thing is shot plus these blades are expensive they're between 60 and 100 for a 14 inch blade so you don't want to go and risk destroying a blade like this cutting material the other thing about these since they're cutting at such a high rate of speed the off cuts like this have a tendency to go flying especially when you're cutting miters so if you're looking for a really precise and kind of less violent cut you're going to want to look to a bandsaw versus one of these but if you need a saw that's going to cut mild steel cut it fast and cut it accurately one of these chopping saws these will do it and now i'm going to show you a handheld version of this style cutting saw so on the topic of carbide tooth cutting saws this uses a very similar style blade to those chopping saws but this is a circular saw very similar to a circular saw that you've seen people cut wood with but this is specifically designed to cut metal there's a chip catch right here so as the metal chips are developed they land in a little catch bin to keep them away from kind of the rest of the shop and these things can be amazing for cutting in the field this one in particular is battery powered which is really nice and it has a built-in brake so once you're done cutting this thing shuts off almost immediately something to look for on these types of saws is this little feature there's a lever over here that will manually bring the blade guard up and down what will happen on a saw like this is that while you're cutting a piece of plate sometimes that piece of plate will get wedged underneath here and it'll prevent this blade guard from getting out of your way which can cause a dangerous binding scenario so a lot of these metal cutting saws have a little guard release that you can move with your thumb on your left hand in order to get that blade guard out of the way i'm going to cut a piece of quarter inch plate with this and let me show you how fast this thing deals with material all right so i've got this piece of quarter inch mild steel and i'm going to show you how quickly i can deal with it using that saw now this is a little bit small of a piece to clamp but we'll use it anyway now with a saw like this you want the blade to actually stick out through the bottom of the material about a quarter of an inch so we don't need to go full depth and i've got a zero line on this particular one so i can flip up my blade guard with my thumb and make a cut [Music] so for dealing with cuts in the field a saw like this is amazing now i have a plasma table in the other room but it's only four foot by four foot and because i don't have a forklift on site when i get large thick pieces of sheet goods i usually need to break them down pretty close to my plasma cup part and something like this can be amazing i've cut all the way up to three quarter inch material with saws like this and they work really well that being said they still cut pretty aggressively the blades can be kind of expensive and they're really material based so you're not going to go and cut say a piece of stainless or really even aluminum with the same blade because you're going to want something particularly special so that you're not destroying these fast moving blades now for a lot gentler of a cut we can move over into band saws but before we do i'm going to show you kind of the top tier of saws like this and that's a true traditional cold saw all right so here we've got a hide mech cold saw now this is kind of the first type of cold saw that you would think of in a real professional environment this truly does cut cold it is a low rpm high speed steel blade that is specific and that's very important with these so basically if you're cutting eighth inch wall square tubing that's one inch by one inch which is what i cut the most you have a very specific size and toothed blade for that material now if i want to switch this out and say cut a piece of three inch by three inch solid material i would use a completely different toothed blade with a completely different tooth pitch that's very very important these saws are very expensive but they leave the absolute best finish on your material and they're going to cut the cleanest with the most precision these saws also generally use coolant this one has a flood coolant that floods the blade i'll get this set up and we'll cut a piece of tubing and you can see how nice of a job this saw does now this saw has a two-piece vise on it basically one part holds the material and then the other part holds the cut off so that there's very little vibration in the saw this saw is also a three-phase machine so it's a little less applicable to a small home shop right now it's set for a 90 degree cut and i'll show you how nice of a job it does so something else that's really nice about a saw like this is that it can miter in both directions now this one in particular is made to miter 60 degrees in one direction and then 45 degrees in the other and if you've ever tried to do a project with angle iron you know how important it is to have that dual mitering feature also you could see just how kind of gentle of a cut that was it was quiet and it was very very controlled there's no pieces flying anywhere there's no chips flying anywhere it's very very clean and a cold saw doesn't cut a chip like a regular saw it actually mills a chip like you would have say an end mill on a bridge port or a milling machine cutting and removing material in that sort of manner now the drawback of this machine like i said is that if i've got to switch this out now and cut a solid bar i've got to have a whole nother blade and i've got to take you know and change out the blade also the blades for these are really expensive the blade that i just cut with was probably over 200 now the blades are made to be sharpened so if you do wind up getting three or four different blades you're probably only going to buy them once and then you're going to send them out to get sharpened but that's a whole other logistical issue that you have to deal with if you don't have a local sharpening service this is a 14 inch saw 350 millimeters so if you actually do send out blades it's expensive because they're pretty heavy that being said if you're going to be doing repetitive work with tubing or bar this is like the top tier thing that you can use it is the most precise that blade is never going to deflect like a bandsaw will and it's going to just give you a beautiful beautiful cut so now that we're done with the chopping saws with round blades let's move over to some band saws and i'm going to start by showing you a porta band which is pretty much everybody's go-to saw for their home shop so now that we've gone through the chopping saws i'm going to go over to band saws now this right here is a porta band or a portable bandsaw set up with a table and this is probably one of the most common metal cutting saws that you're going to find in a home shop these things are amazing this one is a cheap like 120 one from harbor freight that i modified into a little table and i used this thing and continue to use it for years making all sorts of different things cutting hardened knife steel titanium you name it i've cut it with this there are a lot of different variations of porta bands and then there are some smaller chopping band saws that are a little more affordable but we'll start with this one so again this is a portable bandsaw it was not designed to go in this stand but it works really well in this application basically all i did here was take a piece of aluminum plate and i drilled some holes in the bottom and i was able to bolt it to the actual cutting plate on this saw this is a harbor freight saw i don't think they make this exact model anymore but they make similar ones to it and i'm going to show you how it cuts a piece of little one by one tubing now for a knife maker or a small metal shop this thing is perfect you can cut flat plate with this i've cut half inch material with this and what's really nice about these is that this blade size is extremely common and they sell milwaukee blades that will fit all these porta bands at home depot in a two pack for like 16 the thing about bandsaw blades is that once you wreck a bandsaw blade you need another one um then you're not gonna go through and resharpen all these little teeth so if you buy a larger vertical bandsaw you're gonna have to deal with a much more expensive and harder to find blade these things will get chipped up they'll get destroyed but you don't want to have to worry about being out of stock of these blades if you're using one of these in your shop so i like a porter band because the blades are so easy to just go out and buy on the topic of portabance i've got a truly portable setup with this one being a cordless brushless milwaukee bandsaw this thing is multi-speed and i've used this on a million jobs and i actually find myself reaching for this bandsaw or this much smaller bosch portable bandsaw more than anything in the shop because instead of me having to take material down off my rack i can just you know climb up on the bench cut my material down to a rough length using a little one-handed saw like this and then bring the material down cut it to size on the bigger saws this is what that porter band i just showed you would traditionally look like out of the box and all i did like i said was stand it up put a plate on it and go to town a company called swag offroad makes some tables for these saws and i'm going to throw some links to those down in the description but again the blade on this saw is the same blade that i've got in the one on the bench so if this one goes bad or breaks the one on the bench can be swapped out vice versa and changing blades on these is super easy you basically just release a lever and you know you got to do a little fishing but the blades pop right out there's not really any complicated tensioning or complicated lining up that you would have to do on say a wooden band saw where you can spend quite some time lining your blades up you just sort of pop them out pop them back in give it a run it'll line itself up and move forward on the topic of band saws that can be vertical i'm going to show you a bigger vertical band saw that can be a lot harder to get blades for so this right here is one of my favorite tools this is a powermatic model 143 multi-material bandsaw this could be used as a wood band saw or metal cutting bandsaw by changing the lever positions in the gearbox on the back of the machine right now i have it set up to cut metal it runs really slow with a lot of torque and does a fantastic job i don't use this saw very often and the reason is because these blades are kind of expensive and when you're cutting material you don't know if you're going to hit a hard spot or maybe you're going to cut a bolt and the bolt is a little bit harder than that blade is ready to cut and once you start chipping these teeth off it's like a 65 or 70 dollar replacement for this now there are some companies like starrett that make a really really high quality blade for a saw like this but i need a very specific size and i can't just run out to the store and get one if i'm in a pinch that being said for cutting fine work i can get smaller blades that'll cut curves for cutting thick work i can get nice thick blades and it's a way quieter much more refined cut when i'm using it i really enjoy using this saw when i have the need for it but on a day-to-day basis i find myself going to the port-a-band much more often because i don't want to wind up in a position where i break this blade or i blow the teeth off and then this saw is going to be down and i got to spend another 65 or 70 dollars now the vertical band saws and the porter bands are great but if you want to make repetitive and precise cuts you're going to need a horizontal band saw i've got two in my shop one very small kind of home model one and then the big one behind me and i'm going to show you the differences between the two of them so if you've watched my channel before you've seen this saw a bunch this is a when horizontal chopping band saw so now this uses a trigger and it is just manually controlled very similar to the other chopping saws we had earlier in the video now mine i had to modify because the blade kept popping off and it was driving me absolutely crazy but since i did this little kind of washer trick it's worked pretty well what's nice about a saw like this is it's got a pretty nice capacity it's very quiet and controlled and this saw in particular can miter i thought i want to say 60 degrees in one direction now this saw is a lot more controlled of a cut than one of those chopping saws other than the cold saw and since it's a band saw you can cut thick solid material pretty easily and very cleanly because it's going to just slowly remove that material and cut through it here's a piece of one inch solid bar and i'll cut it on this [Music] [Applause] saw so that's a really clean cold cut very little burr and just a nice overall process to cut that you can also like you can see here cut miters on a saw like this the problem with this saw is that its capacity is so small and the blade just has so much ability to waver that when you start to cut larger pieces of material especially larger pieces of tube like this i find that it's not very accurate it's great for say one by one tube like this that you can just cut 45s in but you're going to wind up doing a good amount of grinding and it's very very difficult to get a saw like this tuned so it cuts perfectly that being said this is only about a 250 dollar saw the blades are not expensive you can get them on amazon and they're pretty fast to change so if you're looking for something that's going to give you a horizontal bandsaw and a very small footprint this is my favorite saw to recommend all right so moving up from that little chopping bandsaw you've got a much larger much more expensive dual mitering horizontal bandsaw in this bayley bs350m now this is about a seven thousand dollar saw but its capabilities are incredible in comparison to some of the smaller saws now this uses a one and a quarter inch thick blade very very tall which is going to keep it much more rigid and it's going to keep it from wavering in the cut and this also can miter in both directions this vise can be slid over and this saw can spin and miter 60 degrees in one direction and 45 degrees in the other this is also an automatic horizontal bandsaw so you may have seen smaller horizontal band saws in shops before where you sort of just flip a lever and the saw slowly drops it cuts to the material and then it turns off at the bottom that's essentially what this saw does while also offering the option to hold the trigger and manually pull the saw through now the beauty of a saw like this being a bandsaw you can cut really large solid material with efficiency and ease and it's still going to be extremely accurate with some of those chopping saws if you put a three inch solid bar in there it is not going to like ripping all that carbide through that and you know cutting that piece a band saw like this is made to remove material and it's going to be able to cut solid bar really really efficiently this is also a coolant fed saw similar to the cold saw that i showed you before but at the moment i don't have the coolant feed set up because i'm in the process of changing it out i'm going to show you a cut with this saw just so you can see what it's capable of doing so we've got a piece of two by three by quarter inch wall in there and this has a hydraulic piston that will lower the saw head i can adjust the speed in which it falls making it slower or faster and i can turn on the saw right here and i can adjust the speed of the blade using this dial [Music] so you can see at the bottom of the cut the saw automatically shut off i can lift the head lock the piston and we're ready to make the next cut like i said the big appeal of a saw like this is being able to miter in both directions so by undoing this lever right here there's also a safety pin in the back i can spin this whole saw head in either direction so if i wanted to miter in the other direction i can loosen some adjustments on my vise and i can actually slide my whole vise head over and then the vise will be out of the way for me to miter to either the left or the right [Music] it's also got a really nice detent for locking in your zero that you can fine tune and locks down again this is a real professional level saw this thing has a maximum of capacity of about 10 inches and this saw retails for around seven thousand dollars before freight all right so that about does it for the variety of saws that you can use in a metal shop i really just wanted to share with people that there are a ton of different options at many different price points that will help you cut metal efficiently and get you started on your metal working projects and your metal working journey in your home shop now i went all the way from the bottom to the top going from those inexpensive porter bands up to the big band saw and the big cold saw um i started with that abrasive cut off saw in the back like i said my dad let me use that when i was a little kid he passed it down to me and i still keep it in the shop if i was going to tell somebody what saws to get started with i would say get yourself a porter band and maybe a table kit and then one of these horizontal chopping band saws because they're really going to allow you to cut the largest variety material from solid to tube and then if you want to work more efficiently get yourself one of those cold cutting saws and eventually work your way up to some of these big machines portable saws are fantastic if you're going to run around and do job work or if you're in a smaller shop and you need to say go to a metal supply and cut up material i utilize all the saws and all the tools that i have in my shop but i just don't use them every day the same way i like to have a variety of things and i've spent a really long time collecting all these tools and i have bought pretty much all of them second hand to save money now that being said i'm not expecting or telling anybody to go out and spend six or seven thousand dollars on a cold saw or a big band saw like this you can find these tools used i bought these big saws used and i got them both for under 2 000 which is a huge savings off of the retail and there are tons of deals out there i also want to say i recently relaunched my patreon and i'm going to be sharing tool buying deals from around the country on there contributions start at a dollar a month and i've been posting pretty much every day different tool deals that i find either at auctions or over on facebook marketplace or craigslist so if you want to check out some cool used tool deals check me out on patreon i really hope you enjoyed this little video i want to do some more videos in the shop talking about tools it's something that i'm really passionate about and something i get a ton of questions about through my instagram you don't need all this expensive stuff like i said to fabricate great projects but i think it's very important to know what's out there because if you do want to expand on your business or expand on your personal projects you need to know what's next around the corner so you can say hey i want to do this project but i want to do it more efficiently and if you have the awareness of new and different tools it will just help you have a goal to set that you can say hey you know what i really want to get a cold saw so i'm going to save up my money or look for one used i didn't know about half of these tools when i first got started and now having them all in my shop it's the first thing i go to when i know i have a specific project i know exactly what tool i'm going to need to use and they all help me get things done more efficiently and honestly just have more fun making stuff because i have the right stuff if you have any comments or any questions suggestions on other ways to cut metal like i showed leave them down below i'm happy to answer them and i always like when there's a dialogue in the comments my videos if you like this video give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos like this and more videos in the shop and i would love to hear what you guys want to learn about next i'm thinking about making a video showing how to drill holes in metal because god there are a ton of questions about what kind of drill bits what kind of tools and what you need to do it and it's so much easier than i think most people realize so i'm going to be sharing something about that very soon got a lot of great projects coming up if you want to see what i'm doing on a day-to-day basis here in the shop follow me right here at make everything shop on instagram i post pretty much every day and i'm always sharing behind the scenes and asking people questions on what they want to see next and interacting with people over there on instagram i really hope you enjoyed this again i am kriset for make everything and i hope to see you on the next one

Channel: Make Everything

Views: 45,613

Rating: 4.9314284 out of 5

Keywords: how to cut metal, metal cutting saw, horizontal bandsaw, metal cutting bandsaw, how to do it, intro to metalworking, metal shop, welding shop, evolution saw, portable bandsaw, swag offroad table, knife making saw, how to cut steel, how to cut aluminum, m18 bandsaw, hyd mech, cold saw, abrasive cut off saw, the best way to cut metal, maker, small shop, how to start a welding business, how to knifemaking, how to make, porter cable bansaw, baileigh, bs350m, wen bandsaw

Id: LuKtBDrQVb8

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021