David Edgar

very lifelike, wonderful.

Get a 2nd bit of stock similar diameter, lay them side by side, get a straight edge and scrape over the top of the 2 lengths, This will give you a center line to measure on. Over 30 years I made 1000's of sand blasters made from tube, worked every time.

I am having trouble putting this up as a separate topic, so I will put it here in case . do hydraulic rams make acceptable tools? Thanks in advance.

Francis, were you running the same number of teeth for the 1" bar stock on the HB as in the Vermont and Norton?

where do you get the collars from for your fly press tooling? my spigots are1" dia.

Or blast it with a non ferrous media.

here was me thinking of shimming it up. Thank you all for your replies, Sorry for the late response I got a new computer and it has more foibles than the old one just have to find a nice shaper with super vice David

I heard some good advice on the TV the other night ,Old guy to young guy, Don't train for anything that you are not prepared to do all day every day.

Thank you all for your replies. It looks like the mill is favourite but the shaper could do it, but its use for other jobs would be limited. The taper is the part of the equation which I am struggling to get my head around with a shaper. Thanks again David

Anybody out there cut tapered dovetails for their dies? I was thinking about buying a milling machine, but this is the only job I have for it at the moment. Grant mentioned a few years ago that a shaper was a good tool for that job,it would be a lot cheaper. Does a machinist know the best way to do this? Perhaps I shall just save up my pocket money and buy some dies.

The narrow top die is why it is good at stretching or drawing out. Try turning your work 90 degrees along the length of the die and see the difference.

bookmarked, downloaded and printed out. thanks david.

Thanks Alan and Kozzy for all that great info, I really need to build up a bigger selection of blades, starting tomorrow I can have confidence in ordering a coarser blade 80 or 90 teeth to cut the bar I want.It has reinforced the fact that I cannot stick any blade in and hope it will do for everything. I shall bookmark this page to be able to refer to it when necessary. Thanks again very much for going to the trouble. David

Thanks for the replies lads,Yes the 220 pitch ones are either sharp or new. As circular blades are not linear, I will mark off 1" on some larger round and count the teeth. I also use Rocol cutting fluid but diluted.I just keep adding water until the colour looks right. How many teeth do you run in yours Alan?

I use most methods to cut mild steel bar to size, from cut-off disc, small band saw, ironworker, which only goes to 1", my 300mm cold saw cuts tube, pipe, hollow section well with 220 pitch circular blades but struggles with solid. Should I be using a blade with less teeth? It is a fairly substantial saw with 3ph 2 speed geared motor. I do not think the 3 TPI rule applies with cold saws. I do not want to use the abrasive cut-off,too much noise& dust.