Is there a better way to cut brass other than a dremel cut disk? Its prety thick maybe 1mm little less I don't remember and doesn't say on the sticker. Any sugestions ty. SP
The ideal way would be with a bandsaw but not too many of us have one of those in our shops. I use a regular hacksaw and then polish up the cut with my dremel or bench grinder. I was always worried about running the cut disk through that much metal and having the disk come apart if too much angle was applied.
My two cents,
Rex
I have used a bunch of copper and soda cans that I sliced with an old style heavy duty paper cutter. If your brass is thin enoughit this might work.
Tom Trigg
To thick for snips of any kind. Problem is its small but fairly thick. I tried it with the dremel last night. Anyway it worked but took about 30 min to do one, ate half the blade up. Managed not to break the blade at least. I need 24 of these little parts. Think I will try the hack saw on the next one might make the straighter lines that I want. BTW I know someone will ask but these are for making wheel trucks. And does anyone have experience at making thier own? ty SP
What kind of trucks? I've done archbar trucks with brass strip. To be perfectly honest, unless you're looking to replicate a very unique style of truck, most of the time they get lost in the shadows to the point where you can use something "close enough" to the prototype that's already commercially available.
As for cutting the brass, try a jeweler's saw if your cuts are going to be anything other than straight lines. They're much lighter than a hack saw.
Later,
K
I use a Harbour Freight bench top cut-off saw:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=42307
Instead of the blade that comes with it, I use some abrasive cut-off blades from Micromark:
http://www.micromark.com/CUT-OFF-WHEELS-2-DIA-10mm-HOLE;-PKG-OF-3,6669.html
This has been great for cutting some 1/4" x 1/16" brass I've been using. I also use it for cutting tubes and smaller pieces of brass.
For your case, I'd recommend building some sort of stop to make it easier to cut all the pieces to the same length. There's a number of people on the web that have done this.
After rereading my posts I guess I forgot to specify. I am cutting a pattern out of the brass. Kind of a horse shoe shape that will hold the wheels in place. I would post the pattern and have an avatar but my computer is not reading SD cards from my camera atm.
<russian accent> "Just hit the *** thing, its all made in Taiwan"
And the part that fits into the horse shoe shape is 5/16 Square Brass Tube who knew that would be an odd size difficult to find in a small quantatie. Only place I could find it at first wanted me buy 30 feet worth. Finally found a place that had it and would sell a small amount.
And the Harborfreight ling didn't work.
What about a coping saw with really fine teeth?
Gonna try a little saw no idea what its called but it takes a hack saw blade, its small and one handed. My Dad had one. See how that turns out.
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