metal bench shear

Joe Calton

Joe Calton

Joined
Jul 8, 2008
Messages
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Figured yall might enjoy this, I got a couple sheets of 15n20 from admiral to make some damascus, and while it isn't hard, it isn't soft either. it strips the teeth off my bandsaw, and gums up the blade on my abrasive saw. found a 12" metal bench shear from msc {the old enco} on sale for around $100 when combined with a coupon and got some other stuff to qualify for free shipping. made shelf for it that also doubles as a pretty handy anchor point to use it as either a bench mount with a c-clamp, or a floor mount with a 2x4 wedged under the power hammer. anyway, here is a video, hope you enjoy it.

 
Good report , thanks. I would have liked to see better clamp down force , more clamps . You mentioned annealed 1095 is softer than the 15N20.Have you tried annealing the 15N20 ?
 
mete said:
Good report , thanks. I would have liked to see better clamp down force , more clamps . You mentioned annealed 1095 is softer than the 15N20.Have you tried annealing the 15N20 ?
Click to expand...

I find 2h at 1200 works very well with the pre hardened 15n20. It comes at about Rc42-45 for band saw blades.
 
Shears are wonderful tools for cutting straight lines.
Cutting thin steel stock on a bandsaw requires a very fine-toothed blade. I use a 24 TPI blade and have still ripped the teeth off cutting stock that is too thin.
 
mete, thanks for the kind words about the vid! on the bench, Id rather have just a couple of quick c-clamps, as I'm not planning on doing any heavy cutting there, mostly kydex and copper and nickel for mokumae and such.

mete and willie, I have not tried annealing the 15n20. the sheets come in the mail at 8"x 48" so I would have to build a larger kiln to anneal it as the one I built is way too small for a sheet of steel like that, its only 5"x5"x 24" or so. I just needed something to cut the sheet down to size so I could weld it with 1095.

bill, yes this shear is a very handy new tool! I think I usually get the 24 tpi blades and they work great for the annealed thin 1095 that I usually get, but they last about 2" or less on the 15n20.

ken, in the march 2017 catalog I have that I zoomed in on in the vid, the order # is WL00919290 for the 12" shear and WL00919225 for the 6" shear
 
Ther Japanese smiths use a big bertha version of a hand shear to cut out and pre-shape knife blanks (IIRC, it will cut annealed 1/4" steel). They can trim amazingly close to the profile line, and thus cut down profiling time. During the days when most shaping and profiling was done by files and stones, that was a big deal.
 
I should add -- if you use 15N20 with 1084 , you'll find that the two have similar HT. If you don't have good over lap of the HT you end up sacrificing of one or the other.
 
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