Home-Built Sheet Metal "Chop Saw"

Home-Built Sheet Metal "Chop Saw" FARM SHOP Tools 28-4-39 Peter Visser of Dublin, Ontario, was tired of struggling to cut sheet metal with a torch. "When I cut thin sheets with a torch, they would warp and I'd get a rough edge. So I came up with a chop saw that cuts sheet metal cleanly and straight," he says. Visser removed the base from a Makita portable metal saw that he already had and replaced it with a piece of flat 3/8-in. thick steel plate, the same width as the saw. It's held in place with two bolts. On the bottom of the plate, he welded two pieces of angle iron to form a slide that holds onto a 10-ft. rail he made using two sections of 3-in. channel iron laying side by side. Visser put a roller and a hand crank at each end of the rail and hooked the cable to each side of the saw's slide plate. The winch system moves the saw smoothly from one end of the rail to the other. The operator doesn't have to lean across the plate and pull the saw by hand. "I use this system to cut sheets of steel up to 12-ga. I lay it on a couple of saw horses so it's up off the ground, and when I start to cut, I lock the saw down and pull it across," he explains. "It makes straight and smooth cuts. One blade will cut the length of an 8-ft., 14-ga. sheet three times." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Peter Visser, R.R.1, Dublin, Ontario, Canada N0K 1E0 (ph 519 345-2182; email: pvisser@ezlink.ca).

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