Diamond wire saw blades

I had a situation recently where I needed to cut a curved slot in a workpiece.  I could have done it with dental burrs grinding out the slot, or drilled out several holes and then joined them up by grinding using dental burrs, but for neatness and time-saving I decided on using a couple of diamond wire saw blades I had bought years ago for some such suitable occasion.

I mounted the wire blade at one end in an adjustable piercing saw frame, and tensioned the blade by leaning on the frame to compress it slightly against the edge of the workbench.  I tightened the second clamp on the wire and was in business.

​Picture 1 on left - shows two diamond wire saw blades and the piercing saw.  The wire blades are bi-directional

​When sawing, I used long, even, slow cuts.  Don’t press too hard.  And make sure the blade is cool and wet, so wet the blade and cut every 5 – 10 seconds.  If you don’t do it regularly you will wear out the blade very quickly.
 
Then it’s a matter of guiding the blade along the middle of the “corridor”, which was clearly marked.

Picture 2 on left - the cut has been started.  A pretty little picture but I had already found out that I had to wet and cool the blade or it would wear out quickly. Oops!

Once the cut had been made it was a simple thing to use it as a guide for cleaning up the faces of the workpiece but I'll show you that stage next month.

Picture 3 on left - a cruel enlargement of the finished cut with the piece clamped in a vice.

​Changing direction of the cut is easy - you just turn the piece in the vice and press lightly on the blade in the new direction.