Recommendation? I Just Cant Cut It

C

Cushing H.

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Jun 3, 2019
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A little tongue-in-cheek title for the fun of it :-)

I just bought a piece of 8670, and when I tried to cut into it crosswise with my portasaw, the blade just did not bite one little bit (whereas I cut some damascus just the other day, and the blade, which is new, did just fine - and still does on the scraps of damascus). The saw also does just fine cutting into the steel lengthwise from what is clearly a cut end.

It looks like the piece (2" wide) was cut out lengthwise using a laser .... and there is a darkened stripe, maybe 1/2 mm wide all along both of the cut edges...... so I am **probably** looking at a hardened heat affected zone. Once I get through that area I should not have any problems, BUT .... how on earth do I get through that hardened zone.

I do not have an angle grinder - so that approach is out. probably the easiest thing for me to do is to take a blowtorch to the spots on the edge I want to go through and hope I can sufficiently anneal the small hardened zone. Anyone done that, and did it work???

another alternative I guess is to go to the edge of a coarse belt on my grinder and cut a notch and go from there - which I think should work?

Any other suggestions??
 
I had a bar of 1084 the same way. Had a hardened area where it was laser cut. I forced it hard into my bandsaw blade and got it to bite in and cut. That worked about 4 times and then my bandsaw blade was toast. Honestly, the simplest would be an angle grinder or chop saw.
 
If you have a circular saw, you can buy a diamond cutting saw blade for it. $25ish at HD. Or buy a metal cutting circular saw blade. Also about $25ish.
 
Cushing H. said:
another alternative I guess is to go to the edge of a coarse belt on my grinder and cut a notch and go from there - which I think should work?
Click to expand...
The belt grinder is what I would use if I did not have an angle grinder. It will make very short work of it.
 
Same here with 8670 and I called the vendor who said yes the laser cut hardens the steel a few thou thick. A couple of seconds on the belt grinder was all it took and it cut beautifully after that.
 
Yeah anytime you are working with laser cost steel you have a very small area of surface hardened material, I would not take a blowtorch to it, just go to the grinder and grind a small notch and the blade will cut just fine, also an angle grinder is really cheap so perhaps just go that route, I buy 2-3 angle grinders from harbor freight once every year and put different discs on them, usual a thin cut off wheel and flap disc and a cupped wire brush. They are like 15-20$ per grinder and you can just abuse them and replace as needed. Overall it’s not difficult to deal with and if using an angle grinder you don’t even notice it.
 
Thanks all - I’ll go with the grinder-notch approach for now. Should have thought of that in the first place. Maybe sometime soon I will get an angle grinder (but I also need a portable bench to use it on in the garage) - sometimes I have a piece of stock where cutout on a portasaw just wastes a bunch of material because it can’t make sharp turns ... also if I ever get around to building an oven I’ll need it to cut the angle iron...
 
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