The Chopper Compendium

anyone ever use one of theese machines a friend gave it to me i have never seen or used one before if its anything good ill restore it it does appear to be all there havent had time to plug it in and see if it actually works . it was sitting in the back of his garage when he bought the house . love free old tools

Yup...I'd check on the price of the blades before I tore into it.
Good saw.
PIB part is wearing out the whole blade. Ya either have to keep moving the vice around or adding stock to wear the teeth evenly. Or ya wind up just wearing out one part of the blade.

NSFM

I'm not familiar with that brand, but I'd much rather use a power hacksaw as a bandsaw. It's not hard to move the vice so you can wear the whole blade, so thats a non-issue. Lots of these have been pushed ot the back of the shop since they invented the chopsaw tho. If you're cutting big stuff that won't go in a chopsaw, its the tool to use, set it up, start it and watch...the weight of the arm takes it thru the material. The biggest drawbacks I'v seen is that its a lot harder to make an angled cut and it won't work at all for cutting shapes out of flat metal like a bandsaw can.

Curt my grandfather had on of them in the shop for like forever!
My dad had it till the mid 80's when my mom died and dad decided
to sell out and retire. His had a mechanism that shut it off when the
saw bottomed out. It cut like a fool. We used it to cut grouser bars
to rebuild worn out bulldozer tracks. ( ya wanna talk about mindless welding)

you cant buy em new thats for sure
chase up blades, theyll last a while if cared for and can be made into knives when worn

Yup, I have a machete and two daggers I made out of those saw blades back in the 60's.
I think now days just the teeth are made out of the good stuff.

NSFM

i got looking into it a lil today and found it has a coolant setup for the blade it seems to be in working order and i found i can get blades from a supplier i use at work one of the ears on the motormount is broken but it looks fairly easy to fab a whole new plate and it has a 3 phaze motor but i have a single i can put on maybe ill post some progress pics as i get it running again and cleaned up looks like a cool machine worth sinkin a lil time into and for the price bet it makes some nice strait cuts thanks for the inputeveryone

coolant is vital , if used properly the blade will last very long , you can buy a phase inverter to change from single phase to 3 phase and speed control
will be included.
G

My late bro used to have one very similar in our old workshop. The older models tend to be much heavier castings and work a lot better. It should have (or can be fitted with) limit stops so it doesn't cut into itself after going through the work piece and also a really good sized coolant tank...that way you can just start it cutting and go do something else for while.....efficient they are, fast they are not

give it an overhaul and it will give you many years of service......great buy dude

Maz xx

Maz wrote:My late bro used to have one very similar in our old workshop. The older models tend to be much heavier castings and work a lot better. It should have (or can be fitted with) limit stops so it doesn't cut into itself after going through the work piece and also a really good sized coolant tank...that way you can just start it cutting and go do something else for while.....efficient they are, fast they are not

give it an overhaul and it will give you many years of service......great buy dude

Maz xx

it is about 400 pounds and has a stop so it wont cut through and the underneath is a coolant tank looks to hold 5 gallons got it for free . have had some time to check things out a little everything seems in working order started clean up on it pics soon

there's nothing i enjoy more then getting something for free
especially if it needs a little resto

ya me too

The one I used didn't have a coolant set-up. but I don't remember it ever smoking a blade. It didn't have a real fast stroke either tho.

I knew a guy with a similar saw. He mentioned that if it was forced it would drift off the cut line at an angle...

Just an FYI

Years ago, I had a reciprocating saw and if you let it do the work, they cut fine. Never had problems with blades.