Thread: Chequer Plate trim

i would cut it by water jet , ask if any water jet near by your area .

I stumbled across some dimensional drawings the other day. I'll see if I can find them again.

DIY water jet cutting? What the? Alternative DIY ideas please? E.g. Tungsten blade on circular saw? Throw a blade away on the job but cost effective??? Wouldnt help for cutting curves though.

Have never had a go at the stuff before so any experience shared would be appreciated.

You could cut it with Oxy and finish the edge with a grinder and flap disc.

I purchased a blade for my circular saw - cost $50. Great for straight cuts.

The corners - I have always used a jigsaw. You will need to do a lot of filing/sanding to remove the saw cuts, but I have always had success doing it this way.

Cheers
Andrew

Might be time for a bench grinder/sander/buff!

Anyone know how they make the black stuff black? Is it just painted?

DAVE
It is easy to cut with a fine bladed tungsten saw blade, alloy blade in jig saw and finish with flap disk or grinding disk for aluminium or masonry. Disks for steel are too course and fill up with the aluminium and can expand with heat build up and disintegrate.

The colour is paint or powder cote. I used white because black becomes too hot to touch. Unpainted also looks good given the zinc plated trim on the County anyway.

You can use 2 or 2.5 and 3 mm plate and it is readily available.

Brad

Originally Posted by tomalophicon

You could cut it with Oxy and finish the edge with a grinder and flap disc.

Just to be clear Oxy/Acetylene or Oxy/LPG won't cut Aluminium. You could make friends with a sheet metal worker/boiler maker who works in a workshop with a Plasma cutter manual or CNC, a CNC laser cutter or the aforementioned CNC water jet cutter. Give them some dimensions and I'm sure it wouldn't take more than a hour of there time to have the pieces for two wing tops and almost any other spot you can think of covered in ally checker plate. Although last time I checked these types of machines/trades command at least $100/hr... and thats probably being conservative.
But I am now interested to find out how much it would be to get some cut out.

For my two bobs personally I have cut out 25mm Aluminium plate with a standard circular saw blade (it was a at the limit of the poor saws abilities though) so 2 or 3mm shouldn't be a problem.

You could also do all but the long cuts with a hacksaw and clean it up with a file. But who doesn't like annoying everyone within a 10k radius with the sound of cutting sheet metal with power tools!