Chop & Section Jobs Made Easy

[mikelo]

While chopping the top on one of my 32's, I decided to try to use my dremel (as my saw was broke). While setting it up I noticed that the cutting stones I use are about 1mm thick. So I had a thought. I stacked three of them on the mounting screw, tightened them up and took a wack at a scrap piece of plastic, and sure enough, the hole it left was 3mm wide. I can now say with confidence that I chopped the top of my 32 Ford 2 scale inches (as I only used two). Seeing as you only make one cut (not two) the two pieces fit back together perfectly. It saved me a lot of filling & sanding time.

Just thought I would pass that on.

[Jairus]

Hmmmm, wish I had thought of that!

[oldcars]

Ditto 8)

[monsterman]

Same here makes a lot of sense.. DUH great idea thanks for sharing I dont think it would have dawned on me to try that.. :idea:

[Mr. Metallic]

Nice tip, thanks for sharing!

[jbwelda]

i must be very dense. i dont even know what this means:

>I stacked three of them on the mounting screw, tightened them up

a picture would be worth a thousand words.

[flatheadgary]

what's curious to me is the fact that this is nothing but a dado blade setup for routing joints in wood. how come nobody ever thought about this before? the funny thing is, i do alot of wood working too! strange huh? great idea mike.

[mikelo]

Sorry jbwelda, I will try to take some pictures. I just figured that if you had a Dremel, you would be familiar with the piece for holding the cutting stones. It is a common piece as it holds several different styles of cutting stones, wheels and sanding disks. They are held on by a screw. I just realized you can put more than one disk on at a time.

[mr moto]

Brilliant!!

[mikelo]

OK, here are some pics to try to help explain.

The mounting screw and disks.

3 disks on the mounting screw.

Tighten the screw.

Hope this helps.

[novadose71]

good idea. Never thought of it. On a side note, I have been using the (paper?) sanding discs to to cut and slice plastic. Works pretty good and a makes a nice thin cut. Now, what do I have that needs a 3" chop?

[Ramaniac]

The stones you are talking about are flat circles used for cutting metal. Dremmel comes with some 'stones' that are actually spherical, conical, cylindrical and other shapes.

Does the speed matter?

[mikelo]

Yes the stones are supposed to be for cutting metal, but have you ever tried it? They cut a little, then explode! They work much better on plastic. I have found that the speed depends on the plastic. For a cleaner cut, go a little faster. If you go too slow, the plastic just melts and gets "clumpy". When you have the right speed, it will, pardon the expression, be like cutting warm butter.

[James W]

Great tip. 8)

It occured to me looking at your pics that the same could be accomplished by putting a spacer between two steel cut off blades. The ones I use are about .005 thick. I get them at Coastal.

Make the spacer out of sheet Styrene of the desired thickness. The thin blades should cut down on heat build-up and the amount of plastic being cut.

That means we can chop tops even FASTER.

Now, how to speed up the finish work. :roll: