Friday 20 October 2017

Oh Bugger!

It's times like this you wish you hadn't left a tap dripping all yesterday morning!
 I had to spend a good deal of time mopping up the garage floor, fortunately most of the boxes on the floor are plastic rather than cardboard these days. A dustpan and brush got up a good deal of the water, and I have plenty of sawdust to help soak it up.

Next irritation was my bandsaw blade breaking, now this was a 1/4" 4tpi blade with extra set which my mate Stuart had bought as a thanks for the bandsaw usage and stuff. It's a blade configuration I hadn't used and it turned out to be very good, cutting nice and straight. I'd imagined that a wide blade would cut straighter but I found the narrower blade better, also good for following curves. (my other blades are 1/2").
The blade is still pretty new and V sharp so I was reluctant to bin it.

There are plenty of Youtube videos on brazing broken blades. This blade had broken on the weld, but I don't think it was a manufacturing defect, more likely due to me cutting odd shape 1/4 logs freehand.
I had an off-cut of Dexion which made a handy guide to clamp the blade to. I just sawed two slots and bent a section out of the way, cleaned up the sharp corners with a file and the jig was ready... only problem was finding the flux and brazing rod. I really must make another draw for welding and brazing supplies.
The ends of the blade were chamfered on the belt sander, coated with flux and carefully clamped up on the jig.
I think the brazing rod I have is quite a high melting point as it didn't want top flow at first, but once the joint was really glowing bright yellow it suddenly flowed. A bit of careful filing and then I tried it on the bandsaw, it clicked a bit as it went through the guides so I put a small grind wheel in my electric drill and lightly ran it over the sides and back of the join. It now runs lovely and smooth, good job all round, taught me a new trick and I have the jig for next time.
PS.
Here's a pic of my G-clamp nest, a couple of old shelf brackets screwed to the wall and it keeps 'em all handy and tidy.

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