Hi all,

I spent probably six hours messing with my saw yesterday. Here's a brief update on the situation.

Re-checked squareness of arbor and bearings to blade. Ok
Re-checked for dished blade. It's not.

Resharpened blade with old grinding wheel that was sacrificed for/to the saw. I then cut a black rock geode that was about the size of a softball. The saw cut it in half in 20 minutes or so. The cut was smooth and straight. I was happy.

Resharpened again. Can't hurt I figure.
Mounted a piece of agateish rock. Start cut. It gets probably an inch vertically down, and quits. This time when shut off, the blade spins nice and free, i.e. not bound up in the rock. I tried sharpening again, but still no luck.
The oil pump is working fine, delivering oil to four places on the blade and there is plenty of oil present at the rock/blade interface.

I know that larger pieces will take longer, but it took over two hours to do this one vertical inch. Something is wrong.

My next thought is that I am running the saw too fast. The saw came to me with the pulley sizes as listed below, so I thought that it would be fine. I found an older article written by another Rob that details pulley sizes and blade RPMs. I have a 2.5" drive and 4" driven which equates (approximately) 1000 RPMs. According to his post, I should be around 700. Maybe I'm trying to cut/grind too fast. I went to the hardware store last night and got a new drive pulley, 1.5 inch - they didn't have 1.75 inchers. So, if I install this with my current driven pulley, I should be around 575 RPMs. I guess slower is okay. Heat will be removed from the blade quicker and maybe it will decide it wants to cut through these rocks. I'll install the smaller pulley this morning, try a cut and let you all know the results.

Anyways, I wanted to give folks and update of the situation and hope that some of this may inspire some revelation.

If you have any tips, hints or advice, I am all ears. Thanks for any help.

Rob

From Rob - August 17, 2006 at 06:09:45
Email: rsimandle[ ]comcast.net

Message: 52075