Quick Tip for Cutting Small Section Steel

[waddycall]

I keep reading about people using disc cutters etc. to cut small section steels, 20×5, 25x5, 6mm rod and so on, which is fine but it does mean you have to clamp the steel, get the grinder out, put your PPE on...
A quick method I use is I have a short length of old triangular file (about 100mm long) which I have annealed by heating to dull red then allowing to cool slowly, I place this on a solid surface (an anvil if you have one), place your steel section on the file then give it a smack with a hammer, it will almost sheer the steel section, a quick bend on the sheer line and it will separate.
You can get about 3 or 4 cutting tools out of a file and each one has 3 cutting surfaces so they last ages.
Don't try it without annealing the file as the file will shatter!

Great tip - thank you!

 

[Hood]

And what about your duty of care!

I never care so I am ok on that score

 

[Kent]

He's not chiselling anything. He's using a triangular piece as a stationary cutting tool.

All this PPE stuff, stuff is liable to explode etc. crap is becoming silly of late. Not meaning you directly, just the forum in general. I'm quite sure most of us are quite old, experienced & sensible enough to realise if & what precautions we need to take with jobs, without anyone constantly making out that we need body armour for every task, or suggesting we're going to blow ourselves up. Caution is fine; Hysteria is tiresome.

I know full well what's being described I would not do it without eye protection. Especially so with an old file, annealed, normalised or hardened.

 

[Kent]

To be fair cold cutting is pants as regards finish and time management on anything that needs a decent finish, your still going to have to hit it with a file or grinder
Rough cutting stock to get it onto a smaller rack or workable size fair enough. A shear works good also and I would not be worried too much about specs with that

 

[Kram]

Hacksaw will go through quicker than I can get grinder out.

 

[Hitch]

I use bolt cutters. Nice and quiet too.

 

[MattF]

I know full well what's being described I would not do it without eye protection. Especially so with an old file, annealed, normalised or hardened.

I'd love to see what gear you wear for even the most mundane of tasks. Does having a wazz require some PPE too?

 

[Screwdriver]

I don't think you'd want to anneal it. That will just make the file soft. Surely you'd be better off tempering it back a bit by taking it up to say 200C for a couple of hours.

 

[Paul.]

Does having a wazz require some PPE too?

Most certainly, that would be Pee Protection Equipment

 

[Kent]

I'd love to see what gear you wear for even the most mundane of tasks. Does having a wazz require some PPE too?

To explain. Old files are mostly full of hidden fractures where they have been dropped and clangers around in thier original hard state.
Anealing proper would do nothing to help this.. In fact a proper aneal will render the tool too soft but I assume here we are talking more heat to full red and leave to cool (what some people call normalise ) again still won't heal any fractures..
1090 / 5160 or any cold work die steel like 01 should do the job fine.. I think 5160 was commonly used in files before case hardening / nitriding became the norm ( most modern files are largely useless for re use as anything )

Two seconds to put a pair of safety specs on could very well save an eye and let's be fair most modern workshops have a written policy of this anyhow. Which is a good thing not something to moan over, when I started actually wearing safety specs for grinding was rare but hospital visits common (oh how I don't long for those days)

 

[MattF]

That sounds fair enough & plausible.