I’m wanting to do a piece with a small inlay of a brass strip in it. But I’d want to cut the final brass strip to size after already being epoxied into the wood so that the wood and brass are flush. The brass strip is pretty thin, about 0.01" thick. And, I think, brass is pretty soft. So is there a band saw that I’m allowed to cut both on at the same time that won’t mess up the blade? I don’t know if the metal/machine shop ones are limited to just metal (other than the horizontal one) and the woodshop ones limited to just wood, but that’s how I figure it goes.
Brass won’t hurt our machine shop bandsaw but you are likely to get a rough cut. And probably leave metal shavings embedded in the wood. I would try a sharp chisel, it should cut something that thin easily, followed by sanding with a metal or plastic sanding block.
As a note, if you use the machine shop bandsaw which, whilst allowed, you have to get rid of all the wood dust both in and outside of the machine as it will cause issues to machine operation.
You can always use a Hacksaw
Or a small backsaw with a thin blade.
So having dabbled in the wood metal combination a little cause it’s a cool look the best route I’ve found unless you’ve got access to a metal cnc is to cut the inlay out of the wood then either through Amazon or another company order a strip that’ll fit, cause most companies as well as Amazon offer endless sizes and widths for pretty cheap, but double check and make your inlay a common size to avoid crazy cost of a non standard custom size piece of metal
Or the woodshop scroll saw.
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It doesn’t use the blades with pins in them that lock it in place they just are held in by thumbscrews so I don’t think they’d be able to handle the horizontal pressure needed to cut the metal before slipping out
Awhile back I brought up the idea of taking one of our old woodshop bandsaws and using it for a verticals metal shop bandsaw, for more rough abuse cutting to keep the machine shops one for the more precision stuff and not say cutting plate metal, which I thought was smart cause we own the machine already but it was shot down at the time but I still feel it’s a great fill for a ongoing need for the metal shop
Blade speed needs to be much lower on a metal bandsaw, nice ones use a gearbox.
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His metal is only 0.010" thick.
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I was assuming that was a mistype since that’s like 100 layers of aluminum foil and being that mailable it’d be hard to get it into the slot when glueing without significant deformation trying to tap it in, but if it’s really .01 then yea that’s be no issue but, the metal shop has a bench shear that’ll cut stuff that thin and you can get a super clean cut line
I dunno that’s just what the website says. It’s pretty flimsy stuff.
Yea then there’s a bench shear in the meta shop that’ll give you a good solid cut, but I’d recommend for esthetics to consider something more in the .1” range cause .01” once all said and done will barley be visible unless you look super closely and getting it into the grove without gaps or bending the metal will be extremely challenging because the porous nature of the wood will swell once any type of glue or adhesive goes on it, so you want it a really tight fit dry, I generally go by I should have to use a good amount of force to separate pieces when dry so once it’s glued it’s almost seamless And .1” will give you the ability to get a really tight dry fit and then be able to bang it into place when glueing it up
absolutely right. Additionally, the regular woodshop blades aren’t going to hold up on metal very long. Woodshop graciously donated some blades to the machine shop because of a misordered size. They don’t last long even against aluminum. I changed one out yesterday. After a member was done cutting thru a 2" thick aluminum block it had exactly zero teeth left. I’m pretty sure the last 1/3 of the block was a straight friction cut. cheers!
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Are you talking about an edge cut, or making the surface flush?
Well to be fair on multiple occasions people have used so much force on the big 108” bandsaw just cutting wood that have ground the hardened steel teeth flat lol so I don’t think it’s the blades to blame, we get some pretty awesome blades for a pretty awesome price but I do agree wood blades with metal is just gonna cut into your patience more than the material lol
Edge cut. I cut the dado yesterday for the inlay and got it pretty bang on flush, at least for now. Will sand the board separately.
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What do you mean by ‘used so much force’? Is there a way to adjust the big bandsaw so it cuts better that we should be doing to not use as much force? Some gearing adjustment?
For an edge cut you could use just about anything. Your metal is so thin it’s not going to damage any blade. Your bigger issue is getting something with a high enough tooth count that it doesn’t catch on your metal and yank it out. If your wood is the correct size and your metal is proud you can just file the metal flush. You can start with a jeweler’s saw or even end nippers to get the metal close to the edge. Put blue tape on the wood surrounding the metal and file the metal flush.
IIWM, I’d do my best to cut the wood to the exact size before putting in the metal so all you have to do is trim the metal.
If you can’t do that, then I’d seriously consider the scroll saw.
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I believe we have rollers in jewelry/small metals which can thin oversized stock to match a non-typical slot - at least for softer metals like copper and brass. Annealing might be required as those metals work-harden.
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