- Joined
- Sep 13, 2020
- Messages
- 770
- Points
- 601
- City
- Texas
- Vehicle Year
- 2007
- Engine
- 4.0 V6
- Transmission
- Automatic
- Total Lift
- Leveled out +1 inch at the front
- Tire Size
- 33 x 12.5 x R15 Baja Boss MT
- My credo
- For every door that closes another one opens for you to lead others always when you least expect it!
Among my very many hobbies is one of my oldest, and that is cutting rocks & gems. Or "non-ferrous" machining. It's a thing. A big deal in the right discipline. At my highest point I was cutting diamonds, both natural & man made. For science. What a crazy job that was, but I digress, this project is simply for my rock collecting hobby. Being surrounded by wet rock saws in my youth one can never forget the endless adopted grandparents and the smell of kerosene. Not the old folks, they all smell like mothballs. The wet saws all used kerosene. These days plain old light weight motor oil. These are commonly re-engineered, repaired and reclaimed. To purchase a new one is not going to happen BIG $$. Thankfully the blades are cheap compared to what they used to go for.
Here is the $7000 / 24" version. The belt guard is a huge turn off, but required. My design will only have a single belt allowing for separate feed motor at the rear. The front round red thingy is the lead screw (3/4") right angle bearing. This is a Highland Park machine made in Massachusetts, USA.
Here is the same machine 50+ years used-
This older machine uses a round shaft carriage supports with bushings, as the newer catalogue unit uses the square tubing supported by ball bearings. The bulkhead support is simple welded construction. The moving carriage has 2 seperate axis. Fore & aft (feed), and left & right (thickness). Squareness as with any auto or manual fed saw is key, so final adjustments will need to be available, but carriage symmetry will need to be dead on. These parts can also be purchased. Main drive I can do easily with pillow blocks. The 2HP motor I found may be too high RPM (3750). Typically a 1750 RPM motor is under driven 7:1 in this design.
This saw belongs to Miguel, a tradesman who is putting himself through electric engineering school (EE) by repairing and sawing ($20/slice) of any sort of rock you name it. He has much equipment for sale, operates a sort of clearing house for anything Myan to modern, lapidary to "holistic" (folks these days believe in weird stuff). He is sawing some pieces of agatized palm wood that I found in my backyard. See pic>
Here is the $7000 / 24" version. The belt guard is a huge turn off, but required. My design will only have a single belt allowing for separate feed motor at the rear. The front round red thingy is the lead screw (3/4") right angle bearing. This is a Highland Park machine made in Massachusetts, USA.
Here is the same machine 50+ years used-
This older machine uses a round shaft carriage supports with bushings, as the newer catalogue unit uses the square tubing supported by ball bearings. The bulkhead support is simple welded construction. The moving carriage has 2 seperate axis. Fore & aft (feed), and left & right (thickness). Squareness as with any auto or manual fed saw is key, so final adjustments will need to be available, but carriage symmetry will need to be dead on. These parts can also be purchased. Main drive I can do easily with pillow blocks. The 2HP motor I found may be too high RPM (3750). Typically a 1750 RPM motor is under driven 7:1 in this design.
This saw belongs to Miguel, a tradesman who is putting himself through electric engineering school (EE) by repairing and sawing ($20/slice) of any sort of rock you name it. He has much equipment for sale, operates a sort of clearing house for anything Myan to modern, lapidary to "holistic" (folks these days believe in weird stuff). He is sawing some pieces of agatized palm wood that I found in my backyard. See pic>

