A home-made circular saw is a kind of improvised tool that can cope with a number of construction tasks in the domestic environment. In principle, it will not be difficult to make a circular yourself, even if you do not have any special skills, the main thing is to have at least a little idea about working with metal. The necessary material can usually be found in a garage or a home workshop, and a steel corner, a rectangular shaped pipe and an engine are suitable here. The assembled circular can be put on an existing workbench or, for lack of such, you will have to build a table for a circular saw with your own hands. As for the motor, you can use the unit from the old washing machine or walk-behind tractor, but first things first.
Hand held angle grinder
If there is a “grinder” in the household, then there is no better tool for a hand saw. Not sure how to make a mini circular saw at home from such a popular tool? Do not despair, because its manufacture implies only providing a sliding stop and an axial handle to an existing unit. The sliding stop includes in its design two pieces of a metal corner of a small cross section located on both sides of the saw blade. Using bolts and nuts, the corners are connected to the front and rear sides by a transverse ligament, and the technological gap between the sides of the thrust structure and the working element will be provided with washers.
It is necessary to put a metal band clamp on the grinder so that its screw tie is located at the bottom, and a strip of galvanized metal with a hole for the sliding emphasis doubled is already fixed to it. In principle, a special clamp with a stand can be made as a whole, but in this case, the thickness of the metal strip, ideally, will be at least one and a half millimeters. Further, in the gear case of the future circular, you will have to make a couple of holes for the bolts, for which it is disassembled, and the drilling points are determined. Through the holes made, an axial handle is attached for a circular saw assembled from a grinder, since the existing handle will not allow for a quality cut, even if the master has remarkable physical strength.
The axial handle, which will be supplied with a circular grinder, is made of a metal rod or tube. The design in shape can be a transverse bracket or a kind of horn. The ends of the metal part with which the handle is attached to the gearbox are provided with holes for fasteners. There is one important point here: the ends must not be riveted in order to exclude the handle deflection during the operation of the circular assembled by oneself. It is also necessary to make the adjusting rod from a piece of metal rod (4-6 mm), for which we bend one end into a loop, rivet a little and form a hole for the front stop bolt. The uniformity of the gap, as usual, is adjustable with washers.
At the other end of the rod, a thread is cut so that it connects to the handle. Previously, one nut is screwed onto the thread, and after assembling the structure, the second. Tightening and lowering the nuts of this device for a home-made hand-held circular saw, the depth of cut is adjusted. So, at home, you can remake the grinder into a full-fledged disk tool designed for cutting various materials. By the way, remaking a circular from a drill, you can achieve a similar result.
Miniature Table Type Circular Machine
In the previous section of the article, we talked about how to make a mini circular saw of a manual type from an angle grinder, and now we want to share with you the secret of turning it into a stationary sample for greater ease of use. Such a process is very simple and involves the assembly of a U-shaped bed for a circular saw from a pipe with a diameter of 14 - 20 mm with a movable wishbone. The design is made so that its lower ends are bent horizontally along the direction of cut, while they are attached to the table for manual circular bolts. The stability of the circular bed is ensured by additional supports, for which a swinging arm, welded from a pipe in the shape of the letter “T”, is put on a horizontal bridge.
The mobility of the element is achieved by sawing the horizontal segment into two uniform parts, which after installation are fastened with clamps. A circular saw is fixed to the vertical part of the bed on the clamp. The table from a hand-held circular saw assembly can function as a cutting machine if a standard cutting disc is installed on a grinder. It is worth noting that the through cut here will not exceed 80 mm, and for the processing of larger lumber, you will need a more serious home-made circular machine, which will be discussed later.
Stationary machine
A circular machine, as close as possible to factory models, requires a competent approach to assembly, so before you make a stationary circular saw, you need to think through everything to the smallest detail. In principle, a table mini circular saw differs from a stationary one by the height of the bed, which directly depends on the nature of the work performed and the dimensions of the workpieces that the device will process. One-time work can be carried out on a compact table saw, while a circular saw from a hand-held circular saw can be hidden without problems in a barn or storage room, and a joiner who constantly performs manipulations with lumber will need a stationary home-made circular. Below is a diagram on which all the elements and accessories for this type of circular saw are detailed.
As can be seen from the figure, home-made circulars of this type have an understandable design, and drawings, similar to the one presented above, significantly facilitate the process of their assembly. Before making a circular, as well as mounting a circular table with your own hands, we will consider each part of the unit separately to know all the subtleties of its operation and installation.
Circular table
A table for a manual circular saw with a slot in the center is sometimes redone from a conventional kitchen or assembled from beams or metal profiles. Specialists strongly recommend covering a table for a circular saw with a sheet of galvanized metal, since without a coating the base is subject to abrasion in the center from constant friction of the lumber, which in turn will adversely affect the quality of the cut, and the depth of cut will be uneven. Cross ties reinforcing the sawing table are best made from a steel angle of 60 - 80 mm with a horizontal segment outwards in order to simplify the installation of the side stop. The home-made table on which the circular from the circular saw will be installed must be strong and stable, and it must also be firmly fixed in a fixed position.
Saw blade
The toothed disk should rise above the circular table surface by a maximum of one third of its diameter, otherwise it will not cut the tree properly, and the process itself will become dangerous. If you want to cut a beam with a diameter of, for example, 100 mm, the same parameter of the cutter should not exceed 350 mm, however, an engine here will also be required with a power of 1 kW or more. For blanks with a diameter of more than 150 mm, a mini circular made by hand is hardly suitable. On some factory circular machines a proppant knife is provided, which is installed behind the blade at a distance of 2 - 3 mm from the saw teeth. It eliminates the jamming moment due to the closing of the parts of the sawn billet, therefore it can be very useful in the case when a home-made circular is assembled.
Adjustable side support
It is possible to deliver a quality stop from a steel corner with a section of about 80 mm, which is 3-4 cm longer than the table structure. The flat sides of the corner are bent down so that their width is one and a half cm greater than the thickness of the table. After installation, the emphasis is fixed on a makeshift circular table in a predetermined position using bolts. The adjustment of this element is carried out according to the template placed between it and the cutter.
Shaft
The shaft mounted on the circular is the most critical unit, therefore, it is exclusively a specialist on special equipment who needs to develop and test it assembly with the disk. A product from a pipe with a carelessly fixed circle is immediately excluded, because the slightest errors in the operation of this element will turn into major troubles like equipment breakdown, damage to the workpiece and injury to the operator. The best solution would be to purchase a finished shaft with a seat for the torch. It is better to give preference to ball self-aligning bearings having a curved shape of the inner surface, otherwise the assembly made by one’s own hand will quickly collapse and the shaft mounted on a makeshift circular will become unusable.
Broadcast
In our case, V-belt transmission is an ideal option, but it is better to refuse a gear hard mechanism, since such home-made does not guarantee safety. If a nail suddenly gets in the lumber, the rotor of the engine will provoke the destruction of the disk, which can lead to injuries. If the inner diameter of the belt pulleys is small, then slippage will be ensured, and the tensioned belt will serve as a kind of damper. The gear ratio is usually selected based on engine speed, always considering the allowable number of disk revolutions. The smaller the diameter of the saw wheel, the greater the frequency of its rotation can be, and the cleaner the converted unit will be sawed.
Motor
Among home-made devices, the most popular is a circular assembled from the engine from the washing machine. This choice is explained by the fact that its operation scheme is best suited for such purposes. Unlike the collector assemblies that a power tool is usually supplied with, the engine from the washing machine runs at lower speeds, which means that it shows longer operation, has increased efficiency and is not so prone to various kinds of clogging. You can also use a three-phase motor, but then additional costs will be required to purchase a starting and working capacitor, so it is more economical to dispense with a washing machine. Here, in general, and all the wisdom.