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  1. #1
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    Default Cheap saw plate(depends)

    Doing a little web surfing today, due to not wanting to work today( BOM says it very hot, 40 degrees)and I’m a whimp.

    I was looking at Blackburn Tools website checking up prices for saw blades as I am now basically out of stock.
    Now I have no affiliation with Blackburn tools in any shape or form just a happy customer.
    I’ve shopped there once and that was it

    But I got thinking about saw prices and more importantly prices of saw plate.
    Saw plate is generally 1095 spring steel these days, not the kind of steel you can pick up from the local Bunnies store or probably even your local steel supplier.
    An being in Australia down the bottom of the earth too some.
    Tho that depends what way you hold the global map of course.
    Shipping can be a killer, if you find some overseas and have it posted too you.

    So for $45.76 plus let’s say $10 postage.
    Equaling $55.76 I can have a nice new 300 mm long by 0.51 mm thick height unknown but let’s say 100 mm high shining piece of saw plate delivered to my penthouse sweet in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
    But wait there’s more, for my $55.76 Au the shining saw plate comes with all its fangs as Mr Ian W likes to call them(teeth)cut out ready to be sharpened.
    So $55.76 saw plate is looking quite economical a good buy.
    Now if you were to buy a piece of 1095 steel from say amazon at 300 mm long 100 mm high 0.51 thick.
    With postage and the brand new Tax the Australian government slipped in while you weren’t watching around the start of the new year.
    That piece of steel is going to cost you around $50 ruffly.
    But there’s more bad news with your internet shopping steel it doesn’t come pre fanged.
    So if you don’t happen to have a Foley saw tooth cutting machine in the workshop for which I dont[emoji849].
    Your now going to have to cut your own teeth in to your new bit of saw plate.
    Now ruffly a saw of that size is going to cost you one saw file to at least cut the teeth.
    Depending weather your new to that or a seasonal professional you may get more than one saw plate out of your new saw file.
    Price ruffle of saw file landed to the penthouse sweet $15 Au .
    Plus remember once those fangs are cut in they will now need sharping.
    But for the sake of this argument let’s say you get your teeth cut and sharpened with one file.

    So we’re all ready behind Mr Blackburn’s saw plate.
    At $50 for steel
    $15 for a file
    Total $65.
    Now this one will put the cat amongst the pigeons.
    Let’s say to cut and sharpen all your fangs in your brand new piece of 1095 steel takes you 1 hour because you watched some YouTube clips it’s p.... easy.
    Your labor rate is $75 Au an hour, to be fair I really don’t know what a person making or hoping to make cutting teeth on a saw would charge but I think that’s a fair to even lowish price.
    Now that’s basing that on a “living wage” not a passive wage I do this to stay in the shed longer with out affecting the house hold budget wage.

    So Blackburn tools saw plate to the penthouse $56 Au
    Internet steel plus file plus labour
    $140 Au

    So after all my rambling on what’s others options have I completely just fogged over this
    ??

    Cheers Matt(it’s still hot)

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  3. #2
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    Default

    Could you have one for less if you took the plate from an damaged old saw?
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

  4. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by rob streeper View Post
    Could you have one for less if you took the plate from an damaged old saw?
    Rob,
    Now who in there right mind would want some worn out crappy old saw needing this and that.

    When we can buy new and if it doesn’t work just by another new one[emoji849][emoji849][emoji1782].

  5. #4
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    40 deg whats your problem hit 46 today in Adelaide, had my air con repaired on Monday guess what turned it on today nothing NOT HAPPY JAN

  6. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Simplicity View Post
    Rob,
    Now who in there right mind would want some worn out crappy old saw needing this and that.

    When we can buy new and if it doesn’t work just by another new one[emoji849][emoji849][emoji1782].

    Umm. Umm. Umm.

    I don't want to say who.



    Regards
    Paul
    Bushmiller;

    "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"

  7. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bushmiller View Post
    Umm. Umm. Umm.

    I don't want to say who.



    Regards
    Paul
    Probably a good idea Paul!
    I’ve heard about those types.

    Cheers Matt

  8. #7
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    Matt,

    Have you looked at just buying metal and cutting it yourself? I think that's your option.

    https://www.grainger.com/product/5EU...!g!66418500439!

    That's two pieces at 6" x 25" x 20 thou for sixteen dollars. Yes, you have to get it sent to Aus and yes you still have to tooth it, but you've significantly reduced the cost of your raw materials. That is potentially eight dovetail saws, four tenon saws, two big tenon saws and a couple of small ones, etc. There are a number of ways you could manipulate that sheet into multiple saws. IanW cuts plate by clamping a wooden guide to it and then shearing it with a cutoff blade in a grinder, but there are plenty of other ways to skin that cat.

    Does that help you at all?

  9. #8
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    Matt,

    Another thing, that was the very first thing I saw on Google. You can probably do better by ordering more plate.

    I google searched for "1095 shim stock spring steel". If you throw an Australia on the end you may get some in-country results. I'd say it may also be worth calling some local metals suppliers. Maybe if you ordered enough you could piggyback onto one of their shipments from overseas?

    Just some ideas

  10. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Luke Maddux View Post
    ..... IanW cuts plate by clamping a wooden guide to it and then shearing it with a cutoff blade in a grinder, but there are plenty of other ways to skin that cat.....
    Not wood, Luke, some lengths of either 1/8" or 3/16" mild steel. Wood might do for a guide if you were careful, but steel definitely makes a better heat-sink. When I first started cutting saw-plate, I was very fearful that the heat generated by the cutoff wheel would soften the steel beside the cut, or worse, cause warping of thin plate. However, it seems like the process is pretty idiot-proof, even up to 30-thou plate, the 1mm wheel slices through the steel very quickly & efficiently. I've sliced 5mm wide pieces off 20 thou stock for bosaw blades with little or no warping. There is often a little dag of metal where the piece breaks away at the end of the cut, which gets red-hot & air-cools quickly enough to harden. You'll notice it instantly when you run a file over the fresh-cut edge, the file really snags on it. A very light touch on the grinder to remove it & the file is a lot happier.

    The 1095 shim stock makes excellent saw blades, but last time I looked for it here in Aus (several years ago now, I must admit), I drew a big fat blank. It must be used by all sorts of industries, but I could not find a local source for small quantities. RayG provided me with the plate for my first couple of saws, I subsequently bought more shim stock from a supplier in the US (in NY state, iirc). Postage was a killer, but it still landed here for around $10-15 per saw-sized piece, all-up, at the time. In some ways, the sheet stock is preferable to the rolls of saw-plate we imported for the saw-making workshop, however long ago that was. It arrived well-packed and perfectly flat, whereas the dedicated saw-stock came in tight rolls and retained a slight curve after unrolling that was hard to remove, particularly on the inner end of the rolls. You can leave the blueing on the shim stock, it is slightly protective, but it tends to scuff & scratch pretty quickly when you use the saw, & looks rather tatty, so I prefer to polish it off.

    For one-off saw-making, you could just buy a replacement blade for a hard-point saw & cut the hardened teeth off (which looks like what Matt has done here??). I've re-used several old hard-point blades out of curiosity, you only lose about 2mm of the width cutting off the hard stuff, and as far as I can tell, the rest of the plate is the same as any regular saw-plate. One of the saws I use regularly has a recycled blade, & I've forgotten which it is!

    Cheers,
    IW

  11. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Luke Maddux View Post
    Matt,

    Have you looked at just buying metal and cutting it yourself? I think that's your option.

    https://www.grainger.com/product/5EU...!g!66418500439!

    That's two pieces at 6" x 25" x 20 thou for sixteen dollars. Yes, you have to get it sent to Aus and yes you still have to tooth it, but you've significantly reduced the cost of your raw materials. That is potentially eight dovetail saws, four tenon saws, two big tenon saws and a couple of small ones, etc. There are a number of ways you could manipulate that sheet into multiple saws. IanW cuts plate by clamping a wooden guide to it and then shearing it with a cutoff blade in a grinder, but there are plenty of other ways to skin that cat.

    Does that help you at all?
    Luke,
    Yes that does help thank you.
    The link you posted to I think actually come up with 1010 steel.
    Not 1095 so not sure if the qualities of 1010 steel.

    Cheers Matt.

  12. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Simplicity View Post
    Luke,
    Yes that does help thank you.
    The link you posted to I think actually come up with 1010 steel.
    Not 1095 so not sure if the qualities of 1010 steel.

    Cheers Matt.
    Matt, 1010 is certainly not the same as 1095. I stand to be corrected, but from the properties given here, I don't think1010 is at all suitable for saws.

    Cheers,
    IW

  13. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by IanW View Post
    Matt, 1010 is certainly not the same as 1095. I stand to be corrected, but from the properties given here, I don't think1010 is at all suitable for saws.

    Cheers,
    Thanks Ian.
    A quick scan they look “sort” of similar.
    But I wouldn’t have a clue when it gets down to nitty gritty of stuff like that.
    I’m very happy to follow the party line with this and won’t be rocking the boat and stick to 1095.

    Cheers Matt

  14. #13
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    Matt

    Ian's link nearly confirms what I thought: Namely that the last two figures indicate the percentage of carbon. To be called high carbon and, by definition a steel that can be hardened by heat treatment, the content on carbon should be .05% or higher.

    1095 has .95% carbon. 1010 by this should be .01% (therefore not high carbon) or 1%, which would be higher. Strangely that chart in the link on the bar graph depicts exactly that at .01%, but the figures at the end indicate a range from .08% to .13%. Firstly that is very variable and secondly does not fit the bar chart.

    For further information google 1010 steel or 1095 steel. 1095 always comes up a knife and blade steel. 1010 seems to be more for fabrication and pressed metal applications, but does seem to be .1% carbon which is higher than the 1095 product.

    The question remains as to what steel is used for the hardpoint saws. It has to respond to induction hardening . I too have planned to toy with "re purposing" those hardpointers, but it is still a "one day" job.

    Regards
    Paul
    Bushmiller;

    "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"

  15. #14
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    Paul, yes, I forgot to point out that the last two digits in the steel designation are the C content, & in very simplistic terms, the amount of carbon determines how hard you can make the steel by heat-treating (within limits!).

    Matt, the only really important graph on the page I pointed to is the one for hardenability, and 1010 is considerably behind 1095 on that score. It all gets rather complex for a non-metallurgist - the more I try to research on the interweb, the more confused I get! I thought I might be able to discover exactly what alloy is most commonly used for the hard-point saws, but that isn't easy to discover - the manufacturers seem to be (unnecessarily) coy about that. One statement I did find (Wikipedia), was that the best steel alloy for impulse hardening contains 0.04 - 0.045% C, i.e., half that of the much-championed 1095.

    To get a real determination of hardness, you need the right gear. With a file, I can't tell the difference between the non-impulse-hardened steel of a hard-point & the 1095 saw-plate I've used. There is slight variation between the batches of 1095 I've used, judging by the 'feel' of the file, & the number of files it takes to cut in a set of teeth (after allowing for the variation between makes & batches of files!). And while 1010 won't take the same absolute hardness as 1095 all things being equal, the final hardness of any hardenable steel depends on how much it is tempered back from the hardness you achieve after the initial hardening step.

    It's all too hard (pun intended) to be certain about what hardness the body steel of hardpoint saws. My practical approach was to 'suck it & see'. There's bound to be variation between saws from different makers, the cheapest end of the market will probably use the cheapest steel, meaning quality control in alloying may not be as good as the 'best', however, I'm blowed if I could detect any major & consistent difference in hardness between those I tried & 'proper' saw plate.

    And the real proof of the pudding (i.e., how well the press-ganged saw plate from a worn-out hard-point copes with the job it's expected to do), is even more difficult to assess without a well-designed head-to-head comparison. However, again, I haven't been able to detect any significant difference.

    My working hypothesis would be that there is a range of hardness that will work well enough on a saw used on 'average' woods, the precise hardness probably isn't all that critical. There is no doubt whatever that sharpening angles have at least as much bearing on tooth durability as absolute metal hardness (there is a story I saw in a Disston publication where Henry claims that if 'properly sharpened' an ordinary hand saw will cut mild steel bar easily).

    As I said, it's all too hard.......

    Cheers,
    IW

  16. #15
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    Default Cheap saw plate(depends)

    Ok I’ve just re read from Luke’s post down so 1095 is just tougher than 1010.
    Why didn’t you just say that in the first place[emoji849][emoji849].

    Cheers Village idiot.

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