Cutting O2 steel

[Cherryville Chuck]

I bought a bar of O2 tool steel a while back to make various plane or scraper blades from. It's 2" by about 18" by 1/8" thick. I decided I want to make a chamfer plane with a blade about 3/4" wide by 6" long so I needed to cut a piece that size out of the bar. i scribed the dimensions onto the bar and thought I'd try cutting it with a jigsaw. That blabe made about a half inch cut before the teeth lost their set and dulled. I've cut planer blades with a cut off disc on a dremel but it's slow going and hard to cut really straight. So I got out my recip saw and put a Freud steel demon blade on it. I wasn't sure I could make a straight cut with the recip saw but it went pretty good and only took altogether about 2 minutes. This looks like it will be my go to for cutting the rest of this bar up. The blade has carbide teeth and is a little stiffer that standard wood and metal cutting blades so it is less prone to wander.

A testimonial to the Freud Steel Demon blades
I bought these blades because I had an old truck axle I needed to get the tires off of so I could dispose of the tires and rims separately and see them recycled without costing me. The tires had been on the rims, the old split type, for about 50 years so there was no beating the beads loose. The only option was cutting them off. A standard hack saw blade cut the tire okay, though slowly, but when it got to the beads it wouldn't cut through the stainless wires in them. I found the steel demon blades and thought I'd give them a try. They cut through the bead wires, the spring steel split rings, and the rims like they were butter. So far that one blade shown on the recip saw has cut 4 20" truck tires in half, 4 rims and split rings in half, the outer rims from the spokes so that I could get to the inside wheels on the duals, plus this piece of tool steel and it's still going with only a little damage to one tooth. I'll be using my recip saw to do most of my steel cutting from now on. They do a neater and cheaper job that using a torch or abrasives.

[Cherryville Chuck]

Once I cut the piece out I neded to smooth the cut edge so I got a strip of wood that was slightly narrower than I wanted the finished blade and I clamped the steel in between 2 pieces of it and flushed the factory edge to the back side of the strips. I took that to my bifg belt sander and held the rough edge against the belt and gauged keeping it staight by the space between the wood strips and the belt. It worked pretty good. i checked the width at each end of the strip when I was done and I was only out 1/128th of an inch which is plenty good enough for what I need. There's still a little machining to do and it will need to be hardened yet but so far so good.

[Herb Stoops]

Chuck are you dry cutting or using some kind of coolant? Does it get red hot at the cut? How does that blade compare to a hacksaw blade for cutting? The reasons I ask is I always use hack saws for that type of cutting or the dremel thin discs. The discs don't last long ,but they come with several in a pack.

Did it take the grit off the sanding belt?
Herb

[Stick486]

good deal on the blade.. thanks...
I believe that same blade is still made to fit jigsaws...

[Cherryville Chuck]

Chuck are you dry cutting or using some kind of coolant? Does it get red hot at the cut? How does that blade compare to a hacksaw blade for cutting? The reasons I ask is I always use hack saws for that type of cutting or the dremel thin discs. The discs don't last long ,but they come with several in a pack.

Did it take the grit off the sanding belt?
Herb

Dry cutting Herb. It hasn't produced enough heat to be of concern. I can't recall if it even felt warm when I grabbed it to part it loose. I didn't try a hacksaw. That would have taken a very long time with considerable shoulder wear and tear on my part. I assume that the jigsaw blade for metal would be similar to a hacksaw blade and the jigsaw blade (a Bosch) didn't last long. I don't know that a 5 pack of them (about $10) would have finished cutting out the blank. The Steel Demon cost around the same, already cut all the stuff I said plus this, and it's still going. I have no idea yet what it takes to kill one of them. There is a variety pack I found at HD that also had one or more 8 or 9" blades included for about $20 I forget exactly what was in it but it was a very good deal.

I used a dremel like you to cut a 12" planer blade in half and then cut ears on the ends to make a bevel up spokeshave last year and they do work okay but a little on the slow side. They will cut tempered tool steel. I don't know yet if a steel demon will do that. Like you say, it takes a few of them but they come quite a few to a pack and they are cheap.

As for the sanding belt, it's an old one and it's missing a chunk out of the lower one third. I'm waiting to see if it's going to fly apart before it quits sanding so I didn't pay attention to see if it wore the belt. The sander is a 108 by 6" vertical. You could probably use an inverted 3 or 4 by 24 belt sander upside down laying on a bench and the cost of a belt would be pretty insignificant that way. It's kind of odd that worn out belts don't sand wood very well but they still sand metal fairly well.

[Cherryville Chuck]

good deal on the blade.. thanks...
I believe that same blade is still made to fit jigsaws...

I'm headed to town with a stop at a tool store tomorrow. I'll check to see. If they do I'm getting one. It isn't very often a blade impresses me as much as this one has. The last time was the wafer thin stainless steel oscillating saw blades that Specialty Diamond sells.

[DaninVan]

You mentioned Dremel several times; do you mean Dremel specifically? I use one of my angle grinders for cutting steel and CI (also Al, but only with the discs intended for Al.)
Good quality, thin kerf abrasive blades make fast work out of cutting.
I've never timed it but I think cutting 3/8" rebar is less than 10 seconds. I chopped up a 10' length of ordinary 3/8" threaded rod last week and pretty sure the cuts were less than 5 seconds per.
I've mentioned this before...do NOT use the abrasive discs marked for steel for cutting Aluminum! Serious safety hazard.

[Herb Stoops]

For rough cutting I use the small right angle grinder with abrasive discs. But for finer work where i want to make something as opposed to just whack off something ,I use the Dremel with the thin abrasive cutoff wheels.
HErb

[HandyDan]

O2 tool steel is usually sold annealed but not hardened so as to be easily cut to size and is used by many knife makers. You may need to harden it once you get it to the size you want.

[Cherryville Chuck]

O2 tool steel is usually sold annealed but not hardened so as to be easily cut to size and is used by many knife makers. You may need to harden it once you get it to the size you want.

Yes they told me that when I bought it. It's still pretty hard even without the heat treat. It wiped out a metal jig saw blade in a half inch cut. Maybe if I slowed the jig saw to the slowest speed it might have lasted longer. I haven't tried drilling it yet. I may have to get a cobalt bit for that.

I did find a Freud jig saw blade with carbide teeth for sawing steel but it isn't labeled a steel demon so I don't know if it would stand up as well as the recip saw blade has.

[Cherryville Chuck]

You mentioned Dremel several times; do you mean Dremel specifically? I use one of my angle grinders for cutting steel and CI (also Al, but only with the discs intended for Al.)
Good quality, thin kerf abrasive blades make fast work out of cutting.
I've never timed it but I think cutting 3/8" rebar is less than 10 seconds. I chopped up a 10' length of ordinary 3/8" threaded rod last week and pretty sure the cuts were less than 5 seconds per.
I've mentioned this before...do NOT use the abrasive discs marked for steel for cutting Aluminum! Serious safety hazard.

Same idea as Herb showed Dan but with a generic arbor and cutting discs. Mine isn't specifically a Dremel, that just describes the type of tool. I have 5" and 7" angle grinders and cut off discs for both but for jobs like cutting plane blades and making spokeshave blades out of planer blades it's like using a sledgehammer to drive a thumbtack. They're too heavy, too much power, and too hard to control for this job. It can be done but then you have a lot of smoothing after to clean up the cut. With the jig I made to hold my blank so I could smooth it on my belt sander I had a finished blank in about 3 minutes

[Herb Stoops]

Once I made a spokeshave blade from a used Dewalt planer blade. I shaped it with a grinder, but drilling it was where my problem came in. I had to anneal it by heating it up to cherry with a propane torch and letting it cool slowly, drilling and tapping threads, then heating to cherry and quenching in oil and cooling in a sand bucket.
If I could have done it without the reheat treating, I would have liked it better.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

One of the wife's cousins was a machinist who got into it so he could work on his guns. He told me you could drill hardened steel with a masonry bit so I tried it and it worked, but took some time. I kept coating it with thread cutting compound that looks sort of like axle grease (A Walther product) and when It would start getting too hot I'd give it a short break. I also used a diamond wheel on my rotary tool to sharpen the edge a bit. Masonry bits are cheap which is also good. I'd say the time it takes to grind your way through that way is better that annealing then re-hardening. If you are tapping threads in it then you don't have a choice. I didn't, I added threaded inserts on the top side of the shave instead and just made through holes in the planer blade.

If you are threading the planer blade in order to have blade adjustment you might want to consider doing what I did, which is make a moveable throat instead with fixed blade. I find it works just as well. I installed a slotted 1/8" thick brass plate on the face of the shave which moves up and down to alter how much bite the blade is taking.

BTW, the little diamond wheels for the rotary tool are also handy. If you have a dull TS blade you just want to chop 2 bys with you can do a pretty good job of touching it up with the diamond wheels. If you find it hard to do with the dremel them chuck it in a drill.

[Herb Stoops]

All good advice, the particular plan I was using required installing 2ea. 1/8" dia. threaded studs on each end of the blade and using brass thumb nuts to make adjustments. it all worked out well, and I was skeptical of re-hardening the blade, but it did work, the blade turned out hard.
One time when I was young I was fooling around in my dads shop, and was trying to make a knife from a hacksaw blade. I found out that a high speed steel drill bit will not even put a shiny spot on the hacksaw blade.That was before carbide.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

I couldn't come up with a simple, easy to execute method of changing the blade height, and also keep it rigid during the cut. I think one suggestion I came across was to shim under the blade until it was the right amount of bite. Then I had the brainstorm to just add a wear plate that mounted vertically and adjust it. The blade is rock solid this way.

[Herb Stoops]

That sounds interesting, Chuck, you wouldn't happen to have picture of that?
THis picture is the type I was making. It works good, too.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

Here’s mine. The brass plate has slots in it though not very long ones. You only need a few thou of adjustment until the plate wears quite a bit then maybe I’ll have to file them longer. I don’t really need the wing nuts on top. The friction in the holes would keep the screws from loosening in the inserts. I may get around to removing them and cutting the screws flush.

On your style is there any tendency for the blade to move up or down? What keeps it at the desired height?

[Herb Stoops]

Yours looks good too.
On the type I show, notice the 2 setscrews protruding on each side of the wide slot. They are adjusted form the opposite side with an allen wrench. First loosen the thumb nuts slightly and adjust the blade slightly then tighten the thumbscrews to tighten the blade against the set screws. The set screws are tapped into the hardwood.
The threaded rods are tapped into the blade, that is why I had to anneal the blade in order to drill and tap so they would be flush on the bottom side. Then I expanded then with a center punch to keep them from turning.
HErb

[roxanne562001]

You mentioned Dremel several times; do you mean Dremel specifically? I use one of my angle grinders for cutting steel and CI (also Al, but only with the discs intended for Al.)
Good quality, thin kerf abrasive blades make fast work out of cutting.
I've never timed it but I think cutting 3/8" rebar is less than 10 seconds. I chopped up a 10' length of ordinary 3/8" threaded rod last week and pretty sure the cuts were less than 5 seconds per.
I've mentioned this before...do NOT use the abrasive discs marked for steel for cutting Aluminum! Serious safety hazard.

That is what I was going to say. I use my 4.5 in angle grinder like kind of like a skill saw for steel. You can cut all kinds of shapes with it. I also use this 7 1/4" metal cutting blade from time to time works great on steel tubing and plate. https://www.amazon.com/Diablo-D0748CF-S ... _id=552292 I would think that blade you got would be work great Chuck. I will have to get some of them. Thanks for sharing.

[Cherryville Chuck]

Yours looks good too.
On the type I show, notice the 2 setscrews protruding on each side of the wide slot. They are adjusted form the opposite side with an allen wrench. First loosen the thumb nuts slightly and adjust the blade slightly then tighten the thumbscrews to tighten the blade against the set screws. The set screws are tapped into the hardwood.
The threaded rods are tapped into the blade, that is why I had to anneal the blade in order to drill and tap so they would be flush on the bottom side. Then I expanded then with a center punch to keep them from turning.
HErb

Now that you mention the set screws I see where they are. Seems to me I either read about that method or saw a youtube video on doing it that way.

[Cherryville Chuck]

That is what I was going to say. I use my 4.5 in angle grinder like kind of like a skill saw for steel. You can cut all kinds of shapes with it. I also use this 7 1/4" metal cutting blade from time to time works great on steel tubing and plate. https://www.amazon.com/Diablo-D0748CF-S ... _id=552292 I would think that blade you got would be work great Chuck. I will have to get some of them. Thanks for sharing.

What's the thickest metal you cut with the circ saw blade Roxanne? I've looked at them before but never talked to anyone who has used them. I have an old B & D circ saw that I keep a 7" abrasive wheel on and I usually cut up sheets with it. Not real fast but I can cut a straight clean line with it that requires little grinding after.

[Herb Stoops]

Chuck I think I got the idea from a Wood Mag azine, or woodworkers Journal.
Herb
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Handmade+spok ... 5ca2b6.jpg

[DaninVan]

You mentioned Dremel several times; do you mean Dremel specifically? I use one of my angle grinders for cutting steel and CI (also Al, but only with the discs intended for Al.)
Good quality, thin kerf abrasive blades make fast work out of cutting.
I've never timed it but I think cutting 3/8" rebar is less than 10 seconds. I chopped up a 10' length of ordinary 3/8" threaded rod last week and pretty sure the cuts were less than 5 seconds per.
I've mentioned this before...do NOT use the abrasive discs marked for steel for cutting Aluminum! Serious safety hazard.

That is what I was going to say. I use my 4.5 in angle grinder like kind of like a skill saw for steel. You can cut all kinds of shapes with it. I also use this 7 1/4" metal cutting blade from time to time works great on steel tubing and plate. https://www.amazon.com/Diablo-D0748CF-S ... _id=552292 I would think that blade you got would be work great Chuck. I will have to get some of them. Thanks for sharing.

That's a 'steel' at that price! (Sorry, the Devil made me do it...)
But seriously, I wasn't even aware of their availability.

[Cherryville Chuck]

That is a good price. I just checked at KMS and they want $70 for the same thing. I think I've seen them on sale there or at HD for around $40 to $45 at times which would be similar counting exchange rates.

[DaninVan]

Sounds like a bargain, by comparison...
https://onlinesupply.ca/Drilling-Cuttin ... RC29070360

[Cherryville Chuck]

Yikes. I'll stick with the $15 recip saw blades for now I think.

[Herb Stoops]

The Circular blade throws more sparks than the recip blade is my guess.
Herb

[roxanne562001]

That is what I was going to say. I use my 4.5 in angle grinder like kind of like a skill saw for steel. You can cut all kinds of shapes with it. I also use this 7 1/4" metal cutting blade from time to time works great on steel tubing and plate. https://www.amazon.com/Diablo-D0748CF-S ... _id=552292 I would think that blade you got would be work great Chuck. I will have to get some of them. Thanks for sharing.

What's the thickest metal you cut with the circ saw blade Roxanne? I've looked at them before but never talked to anyone who has used them. I have an old B & D circ saw that I keep a 7" abrasive wheel on and I usually cut up sheets with it. Not real fast but I can cut a straight clean line with it that requires little grinding after.

I have cut 1/4" plate with it. Just make sure you wear PPE it is faster and makes less heat then the abrasives.

[Cherryville Chuck]

I was surprised at how little heat was generated with the blade I used. A regular hacksaw blade would have made it hotter. It was too hard for me to get vertical with the saw so I had a little nib in the corner when I stopped. I grabbed the piece without any gloves on and bent it back and forth a couple of times to snap it off. It seems to me that it was only a little warm to the touch.