Talk:Cold saw

Intro

I tripped over this article by accident. Two requests: the intro should mention that "cold saw" applies to cutting metals, not wood -- as, just looking at the photos, these look like ordinary circular wood saws. The other request -- a discussion of "hot saws"(?) I've got an olde-fashioned metal cutting blade, for use in an ordinary high-speed circular saw, and the only way it cuts is by heating the metal red-hot (which discolors the metal). linas (talk) 18:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The first sentence reads: "A cold saw is sawing machine that uses a circular saw blade to cut metal." As for your second request: I can add a note comparing cold saws to abrasive saws. Wizard191 (talk) 20:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

This article incorrectly states that all the heat is removed in the chip. It also gives an incorrect folk etymology for the term.

Some sources suggest they are called cold saws because they run cooler than abrasive saws. Setting our time machine back a century suggests a different origin involving cutting metal slowly after it cooled rather than cutting it while still red hot: http://books.google.com/books?id=y8VJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA966 http://books.google.com/books?id=RaF9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA390 http://books.google.com/books?id=4Q8LAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA203 http://www.answers.com/topic/cold-saw http://books.google.com/books?id=2ztqAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA48 http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup6/Improved-Cold-Iron-Saw.html Some cold (and hot) saws were high speed friction cutting devices (using a disk of steel, not abrasive compound) that ran at 13000 to 86000 surface feet per minute. While the form of these saws varies, "The Demon" shown in the last link (1891) has a lot of simularity to the modern "cold saw".

My copy of American Machinists Handbook and Dictionary of Shop Terms (1920): "Saw, Cold - For sawing metal. circular saws are generally used though not always, band saws being occasionally employed."

Over time, the usage of the term appears to have narrowed to describe only slow moving circular saws with toothed blades. They may have liquid flood cooling or trough, an automatic feed mechanism, and typically lower the saw blade into the work on a pivot similar to an abrasive chop saw though others might resemble a radial arm saw or a table saw with a sliding blade or blade mounted on a vertical slide. A couple examples of alternate forms http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3919908.pdf http://www.industrysaw.com/fullyhydrauliccoldsaws.html Whitis (talk) 23:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to update it then. Wizard191 (talk) 23:39, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]