a replacement tool to cut sheet steel.

I have lost/misplaced my obsolete eclipse Panel Hacksaw which I have found to be invaluable when cutting a section of sheet steel from a much larger piece. With care, a straight (ish) cut can be achieved and the cut out section remains flat.

I have tried to find a second hand Panel Hacksaw but so far no joy and now need to buy a suitable tool, I thought a hand powered nibbler would be O.K. but as I have never used one I thought to ask if anyone has any recommendations I don't do a lot of cutting and work with around 1.5mm - 2mm thick sheet steel.

I tend to use a 4.5" angle grinder and 1mm thick discs

Nibblers are very good, but have two disadvantages - they have a wide kerf, and they leave a trail of murderous spikey crescent shaped punchings on the floor which stick in your boot soles (and your dogs paws if you have such a thing) and then shed themselves on your carpets and in the van.

Today you can get circular saws for angle grinders and hand held saws which cut every material, including steel.

I use two (large and small) of these Kaindl products, they do what they say:

http://kaindl.de/en/home-featured/kaindl-aktions-multisage-set-topcut-o120-o160.html

Regards, HansR.

Shetack saws regularly turn up on auction sites.

I'd be interested to hear comments on these (or similar generics). Things like 'how thin' and (ignoring the obvious mechanics of size etc) 'how thick' the sheet material can be? What about round/flat bar? What does the cut edge look like (esp. on thin sheet), how much cleanup needs to be left, etc etc.

Roger

I would second Jason and the angle grinder. For straight lines, clamp a guide in place.

I last used a nibbler when I was doing my apprenticeship in aircraft engineering, we used an air powered on for shaping skins in aircraft rebuilds, B****y crescent moon shaped bits of Alclad all over the place, devil of a stuff to sweep up, and dig out of the soles of your shoes.

Ian S C

Edited By Ian S C on 28/11/2015 08:44:51

Hello 13Sigs.

Sent you a PM, might be what your after.

Interesting airframe, I assume it's a Keilkraft

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 28/11/2015 10:12:41

Tried a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade? Good for Ali and steel 16 SWG but noisy, never really tried thickerl. I have trimmed down a 5' long black slate mantlepiece with one, the original depth was too big and it appeared to be top heavy.

Frank

I've cut 3mm steel with a jigsaw. Slow and noisy, angle grinder is faster but best done outside..

Neil

Hello 13Sigs , Got one of these complete with a spare blade , though from memory , both are quite coarse and really meant for building work . Would only want a nominal sum for all . If you are interested I will sort it out . Please let me know at your convenience. I am in South Yorkshire .

Trevor.

My standard tool for sheet metal is angle grinder with thin blade- 1mm. I use this on just about everything. Hand nibbler is really only any good for very thin stuff, and hard work. Hand held jigsaw with a metal cutting blade is good up to about 6mm steel and maybe 12mm ally. I mark of on the back side and put cutting oil or grease on the back line for lube. I find ,on my saw, that it works best with little or no oscillation. If you can get speed and feed right sometimes the swarf comes off in a ribbon, very satisfying.

Neil,No it's just an Airfix model, well not really, it's a Cessna 185B, it had just been completely rebuilt(we did have the name plate). The nibbler was used on areas were curves and internal cuts were required, but the wavy edge left needed filing smooth.

The completed aircraft

Ian S C

Edited By Ian S C on 30/11/2015 10:49:00

Up to about 1.5mm I use Makita electric shears. They are my go-to tool for speed. There is a little bit of a knacjk to these, to hit the "sweet spot" where forward movement is easy, and you do need to exercise positive management of the curling waste strip on longer cuts. Electric shears remove a thin strip to create a channel which forms the cut. They are great for straight or gently curved cuts.

I also use a Makita nibbler for up to 1mm sheet, and that works well on tight curves down to about 50mm diameter. As Ian S C says, the nibbler generates millions of tiny crescent-shaped SHARP waste, and leave a SHARP edge just perfect for slicing flesh.

I also use a pair of good hand shears, up to about 2mm (tough on the wrists at that thickness. I prefer my big Gilbows for that, but tight curves need the aircraft shears which grip one edge more securely, but do leave tiny serrations on the top surface just next to the edge of the cut. The Gilbows tend to slip sideways just a little on the tight curves (Speed and old habits means I am using straight-jawed Gilbows, rather than the curved-jaw versions which might be better for curves).

Fine-toothed jigsaw blades work well. Coarse-toothed certainly do not. Support the sheet next to the edge of the cut.

Marcus

I have one of these nibblers:

http://www.rdgtools.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=nibbler&PN=TWIN-HEAD-SHEETMETAL-NIBBLER-740%2ehtml#SID=241

This works well up to 1.5 mm thick steel. I have never tried on 2 mm. It is designed to attach to a portable power drill. It is quite difficult to control because the head can rotate with respect to the drill. I made a simple mod to fix the head to the drill, see:

http://mikesworkshop.weebly.com/nibbler.html

I also built a table mounting for the nibbler head, see:

http://mikesworkshop.weebly.com/a-nibbler-table.html

The nibble table gives very good control for precision operation on small pieces of steel sheet. Another benefit is the nibbles all stay in the same place and are not distributed throughout the workshop.

Mike

I don't know if this is relevant but I had to cut some 1/4" brass sheet. I started with a hand held hack saw but the depth of cut was insufficient. Next I tried an angle grinder with a cutting disc but it clogged. What was successful was a jig saw with a fairly coarse blade. It was slow but it did the job.

I have used an ordinary Fret saw to do some internal cuts on some 3/16" brass.

Ian S C

Come back "Monadex", all is forgiven. Well up to about 16SWG.

Regards Ian.

Seems that I owe you something Roger, so here it is. Just as a test I did two cuts with the angle-grinder blade, one in a scrap bracket from 1.5 mm steel, the other a piece of 15 mm square steel. Both cuts done in say 5-10 seconds, I did not measure the time.The parts stay completely cool, and the (very small) chips are natural colour also.

Then again came the difficulty to photograph these parts, in my pictures steel never looks like steel. May be the LED lighting has something to do with that?

Regards, HansR.