Customer Reviews

Ingersoll Rand 429 Heavy Duty Air Reciprocating Saw

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had bought a Harbor Freight air saw, which was just plain useless.
I did not realize how good this unit would be.
Used one of blades that it came with to cut some 1/4" thick metal that was impossible to get to with a grinder.
Very nice cut.
I am impressed, recommend.

I purchased this saw to cut the sheetmetal in the trunk of a classic car and it works flawlessly. It will cut double layers of 18 ga. metal and make tight turns in the corner. It's great.

Man this tool works great! My car restoration hobby has expanded to include more sheet metal repair work, so having a mini sawz-all is a must. You can pay more, or less for such a tool, but for my needs the I-R 429 works great (Mr. Diana).

I had also bought a saw from Harbor Freight. I thought I would save a little on a tool that I probably wouldn't use very often. Well I didn't use it because it was virtually unuseable. It was a total waste of time and money. The words useless and worthless defintely describes it.
The Ingersoll Rand 429, on the other hand, is a great tool that does a wonderful job in many different situations. It is the kind of tool that you buy for a certain job and then discover that you use it for many different things. After using the IR 429 I wish that I would have bought it a long time ago. I highly recommend it.

I recently used this little juel to do some fender trimming on my Jeep.
I must say, it worked like a charm.
Only requirement is that your compressor must flow 5-7 CFM.
Nice finish, good sturdy build, replacement parts are available.

I have used a lot of different tools for cutting metal, particularly 16/18ga mild steel 1018, 16ga 304 SS, and 1/8" thick mild. Despite made in china, this is a great quality tool. With a fresh blade, this makes clean work of all of the above. The advantages over a cutting wheel/disc are:
-Faster cut
-Less heat to material
-thinner cut = more material preserved
-less burring on the backside = cleaner cut = less grinding/smoothing
-saves having to swap a cutting disc, so you can keep a grinding/flap/whip etc. disc in your wheel tool

The disadvantages:
-slightly more expensive. Abrasives vs bimetals... cutoff wheel will last several times longer than a recip blade, and costs only slightly more.
-doesn't seem to allow carbide bits, the fitting slot is too small.
-gets eaten for breakfast by anything larger than .125 (1/8"). Don't expect to do more than a few inches of cut per blade after this, YMMV. Of course this varies with TPI, but even lower TPI has trouble with thicker steel. You will be able to do many feet of thinner gauge obviously.
-Uses a bit more air cfm than a die grinder or cutoff. Its not much, but I find my compressor runs a bit more with this vs die grinder.

*Important note*: the 1/4" NPT female adapter is not completely sealed itself. If you fit it up, it will leak eventually. Get a 3/4" wrench, pull it off and put some teflon tape on those threads, easy fix!!

I bought the harbor freight version just after placing a order because I was not sure it would be the right tool for what I was wanting to use it for. Was a good thing I ordered it before I got the hf one to try out, or else I would never of bought it. The 429 can cut a 2x4 in half with little issue and and seems to be working just fine for what I need.

Like others before me I tried the Harbor Freight version before, which, now having owned both, I could plainly see was a copy of this very saw. Unlike the HF saw, though, this one came with two pairs of blades in 24 and 36 teeth and, more importantly races right through 16 and 18 gauge sheet metal. I'm pumped to resume my floor-pan replace project.

This saw cuts sheet metal very well, is steerable and is fairly quiet.
It uses very little air. No stopping required for a home size compressor to refill.
It had very little kickback when the blade hits something on its outward stroke.
The saw has a nice feature that when the blade gets stuck the saw stops instead of damaging the blade.
The price was also low compaired to all other sellers.
It also comes with around 5 or 6 blades, so no need to buy blades for a while.

The saw was delivered on time as advertised. I tried it out on a piece of wood to make sure it works and no problem. I can't wait to put it to the test.