Hemingway Compact Powered Hacksaw

I agree with Douglas Johnstone, buy a 6x4 bandsaw, set it up carefully and get on with life.

Mine is from WARCO and apart from replacing the actual band from time to time, have only replaced the guide bearings once. Must be over 20 years old now.

Made a special adaptor to nole short stock, no problems at all with the machine.

Edited By KWIL on 24/07/2016 11:00:46

Reminded me of when i started an apprenticeship 30+ years ago. In the first 6 months we had to go through a months training in each trade to see if we were more suited to a different trade than the one we were taken on to do. During the month in the Instrument Mechanic section a few of us were messing around with soldering irons (silly stuff).

Any way we we were spotted by the training instructor who had obviously seen it all before  and given  the awful punishment of cutting a 3" steel bar in half with a 6" junior hacksaw. Absolutely horrendous it had to be done during breaks, no meal breaks or any breaks until we had finished .Cant remember how long it took us but a good few days and dozens of blades.

Edited By mark smith 20 on 24/07/2016 11:24:30

This little power hacksaw was built for one of my hot air engines, it uses a junior hacksaw blade, and will cut a 1/2" steel bar in about twenty minutes.

Ian S C

I made mine using the same design as Bizibilder changed some dimensions so I could cut larger lumps of metal and also didn`t weld it. Fitted a knock off switch gadget so I can just load the item to be cut then walk away and do something else. One of the most useful and least tiring tools I have/ I highly recommend Mr Cochrane`s design.

Alan

I don't own one(i went down the bandsaw route) but you can't help but admire these powered hacksaws.

Michael W

Michael W,

I had the same issue with the blade running off the wheels on my Axminster band saw. I finally nailed it down to poorly aligned blade guides, in particular the one feeding the blade back onto the powered lower wheel.

This machine has the ball bearing guides to both sides and the back of the blade. Both the carriers were poorly machined, one was still as cast, and the worst introduced a twist onto the blade as it was presented to the drive wheel.

The upper wheel also had a poorly machined rim not aligned with the bore, giving the blade a weaving motion as it ran off the wheel. It now runs reliably as a result of putting those things right. I have sent an article to Neil covering those and other faults in the blade transmission I have had to put right

Regards Brian

Michael W & Brian,

I also have a Bandsaw, a Burgess BK 1 which I`ve had for the over 50 years. I only ever used it to cut sheet metal because quite honestly on anything thicker than 1/4" I was quicker with a Hacksaw. When the Chinese bandsaws started to arrive in UK I considered buying one then but there were so many articles in ME etc about how to cure them etc that put me off so I went for the powered hacksaw instead. I mounted mine on a wheeled trolley & it sits under the bench until it`s required for use.

Make your own !! It will give you both great satisfaction in having done so & it also cheers you up when you remember you don`t have to use muscle power ever again.

Alan

Hello Alan,

Having cured my band saw of the various faults it has shown over 17 years of ownership, I feel I have invested more than sufficient time and energy to expect it to work now and pay off the investment!

To be honest, those faults have ranged from the irritating niggle to something rather more fundamental which required major surgery on the angle drive gearbox and I suppose there is some satisfaction, of an odd sort maybe, to be had in overcoming the various hurdles in my path.

I am equally sure that, knowing the pain to come, I would have chosen something else, or built my own, but none of us are clairvoyant and hindsight is the wonderful skill we all call experience. I now look forward to some reliable running -------- please !??

Brian

This looks too be the same machine as the FEMI see above

These chinese machines being budget as they are, we all know the skies the limit on how much you can pay for a bandsaw so in the end you just take the plunge and get one at a budget price.

It isn't perfect, the cast (shoddy and porous) iron parts show that it's made to a set cost. I don't mind having to sort out niggles and problems because i never expected it to run perfectly. When i see things that were clearly made badly as part of a built in obscelecence, thats the only time i get annoyed by it.

Much of the designing of powered hacksaws clearly harks back to a day when the only bandsaw on the market was at a 4 figure price tag and weighed 500kg. Without the cheap bandsaws that would come later, the powered hacksaw seems to have flourished.

Despite these changes it still has one advantage over the bandsaw and that is size, the budget bandsaw easily use 2 metre footprint which is alot of room for a hobbyist. There is also the personal aspect of building your own which would never be felt with a bandsaw.

I think it begs the question "so why not make your own bandsaw?" well, i think the stumbling block is the gearbox and possibly the big cast iron drive wheels for smaller machines,

it's much easier these days to either go down the route of a powered hacksaw for space and a project to do, or go for a budget bandsaw and modify it as you like,

a good example; like tables provided from plate steel have never been very good with bandsaws probably due to the weight, labour and shipping costs of a good solid cast iron table.

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 25/07/2016 14:56:34

Went the Chinese 6 x 4 bandsaw route years ago. In my situation space considerations are determined primarily by the width of the machine and these devices aren't very wide. Did the usual minor mods early on to the blade guidance etc. Probably less work than I ever had to do to get the minilathe that I had at that time up to scratch.

The most serious issue was that I wasn't happy with the grounding (earthing). The power cable was routed into the bottom casting and the ground terminated there. The moving part picked up its ground only through the pivot. Easily fixed with a substantial ground strap between the two.

Apart from that, the usual,simple mods to hold short pieces, extend the vice jaws and add a more substantial (semi permanent) table when using in vertical mode (something power hacksaws don't do, I guess).

Couldn't function without it.

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting that nobody has actually built the Hemingway kit to date. Two things attract me to the powered hacksaw - the more compact footprint for my small workshop and the one that my friend has. His is the Blackgates Engineering one, but they don't list it in their current catalogue. It would be cheaper to buy than the Hemingway kit but is pretty much a set of castings and you have to source the motor and other parts yourself.

I'll be going to the Bristol show in a couple of weeks time and will have a look at the bandsaws on the Warco stand and talk to Blackgates about casting availability.