Up until now all the bases have been made from purchased precut billets of aluminium which are then machined by the subcontractor or since last month myself. Having got new quotes for finished bases to the new drawings; I decided that I should undertake the machining myself on the Boxford AUD ..

Having purchased 1500mm of 75mm diameter Aluminium bar stock from a scrap metal merchant (via a very nice chap called Keith !) a couple of weeks back (a real deal providing I could either cut it down myself or borrow a sawing unit to do it at little cost) I set about setting up my  Wadkin C6 bandsaw to try a few test cuts....


How I wished mine looked like this - alas I rebuilt mine from a scrapped unit out of a skip at a factory closure, no table, blade guides or fence. But for free what could I say ?

It now sports a 600 x 900mm x 30mm thick solid steel table, a set of decent guides and shares a fence with my old startrite table saw. It also runs a single phase 2kw motor and has a very dented set of guards thanks to the skip entry and exit ! A rather effective blade guard fashioned from Ali' chequer plate completes the unit.

What I needed to do was to guide a 1500mm by c25kg length of bar stock under the saw in such a way that it would cut true, not spin the bar, twist the cut or result in my losing finger tips etc. I decided to build up a sled jig which would allow me to both clamp the bar to a fence, run it along the guide dado in the bandsaw table and also an additional guide down the saw table free side. 

First cut was 550 mm off the end of the bar - to make things a little less long for handling.  The next question was that of saw blade selection. A couple of years back I came across Ian John  - Store Owner at Tuff Saws  http://tuffsaws.co.uk/ 

Now Ian is one of those guys that you know he knows what he is talking about and can trust. I have purchased quite a few bandsaw blades from Ian in the past and can only say that every last one has been perfect for the job in hand be it cutting up big heavy Oak wet logs or air dried oak cabinet joints. So I dropped Ian an email Sunday lunch time, I got a reply a couple of hours later ... get the idea :-)

I ordered a 4 tpi super hard carbon blade on his recommendation. Meanwhile I searched the workshop for a pack of old blades I dug out of the skip and found an unused 8tpi carbon steel blade which whilst 3/4inch wide looked like it would do the job to get things started while I awaited Tuff Saws best.

I vacuumed out all the saw dust form the saw behind the doors, striped and cleaned the blade guides and lubed with the new oil can for the Boxford :-) All set up; guides adjusted and blade tensioned and running true to the sled face,  I cut the bar stock - nice and steady with light thumb pressure. Noise asside which was not great but different to the wood cutting noise, all went quite well...

The bar in two I checked the cut ends with an engineers square - less than 0.3mm deviation from true - perfect for minimum facing up on the lathe, less scrap and time at the lathe. I adjusted the length stop and then set the shorter length of bar stock up for the first disk cut. 30 disks later and all well except for my getting a numb thumb from the vibration.  I varied cutting pressure and didn't get much difference in speed but lots of heat and more deviation so kept things slow and steady - I will finish the short length cuts in the morning and then re-clean the saw down to ensure the aluminium particles go into the scrap bin, then its on with the turning.

Meanwhile, sales continue to hold up with the HT modifications proving to have opened up the market. 

Investment has now been fully recovered and at last materials are being purchased from revenue streams rather than continual cash injections to meet the growing demand from stock. I expect that there will be a further demand blip ahead of the festive season followed by a slowing down for the end of the cold season ... but who knows for sure ?