Pete, at that size I chicken out, and use the bandsaw, I'v had a couple of cuts lately through 120 mm steel bar, the cuts were .010" out of square, so no complaints there.

Ian S C

I certainly won't rib you for stopping when you were up! You must surely be using the tool beyond its specified range so who knows what would have happened if you'd tried to finish it. The result stands!

Was it noisy, ie juddering and chattering? Did you get proper swarf from it?

Here's a vid of parting off in my Bantam, although on a more modest scale!

So the question is: Was I being a wimp or just lucky to get as far as I did?

Impressive. It took me over two months to hacksaw 5 slices of 5 inch billet, I would never have dreamed of parting it off, (even if my unknown steel billet hadn't been capable of blunting fagersta wke45 )

Note to self. Part off as deep as possible, close to the chuck, then hacksaw the rest of the way through

Hi there, Pete,

I think you did well there, I've yet to master the gentle art of parting-off! I'll have to practice 'holding my mouth right'!

I did do one thing right, though – the first accessory I made for my ML7 was a 'chuck board'. One advantage of the flat-top bed over the vee type is that a chuck board is so simple to make, just a bit of board or ply with a batten screwed to the underside of its front and rear edges to snugly fit over the bed shears. That was in 1970 and it's still going strong! (Yes, all that time and I've never been brave enough to seriously tackle the 'parting-off ogre'!! )

The only problem is that when it's not in use it's vulnerable to the 'swamp all horizontal surface' fungus!!!

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

I've always found that cutting oil or fluid or paste, even if applied with a brush or stick eased parting off no end.

I have a Boxford AUD at present and one day I'll get around to fitting the new coolant tank and pump! At the moment I use Rocol RTD, simply because I have some.

I also hacksaw the last bit because I have the parting tool slightly below centre for big stuff and it doesn't pay to try and go too deep.

Bandsaw for me!

As an aside has anyone used those chip breaker HSS parting blades,and what is their opinion of them?
Mark P.

I find it depends on the material being cut; With fc brass and steel and CI I wouldn't bother as they chip by themselves but aluminium, and ordinary mild steel I prefer a chipbreaker to prevent the swarf from wrapping around everything in sight, especially fingers!

I would say that you did a pretty good job of it, you followed good advice and kept the feed and speed nice and slow with a tip hard'n rigid enough to take the cut,

i'm sure we've all got our stories but i attempted a similar cut whilst making a lathe back plate from cast iron, it was pretty hairy to begin with, hot sparks going everywhere, so i slowed it right down and she duly obliged and took it nice and slow through the whole metal, about 3 or 4 inch deep cut with a similar insert tool, i now know you've got to treat cast iron with a bit of respect.

someone i knew once told me you can back the tool out and move it a few mm and start again to widen the cut. Also, if you don't have a through hole to run into at the end, watch out for the centre height!; there's the time its most likely to snag if its a little off.

Ps: i'm surprised to hear about a similar problem with a band saw, i think it happened to me with a 4 inch block of standard aluminium.

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 31/01/2016 10:47:13