|
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a Miracle but a God Send, December 1, 2002
The Prazi beam cutter is not a miracle tool. It won't give you ideal results without any effort or skill on the part of the operator but it is a valuable piece of equipment that can cut a beam easier and better than most alternative ways to go about the job. I bought the Prazi beam cutter to attach to my old Milwaukee worm drive saw. It arrived complete and took about 25 minutes to install. If the instructions had been easier to interpret, the installation would have gone smoother. Never the less, if you are the type of person who is at the point of carefully cutting large beams in your building career, you will be able to figure out how to install this tool onto your worm drive saw, no sweat. The only major problem I had was the fact that the older Milwaukee saws do not come equipped with a blade lock button. In order to tighten the beam cutter properly, you have to be able to lock your motor shaft down. I ended up opening my oil filler hole in the gear housing and jamming a hardened steel pin into the drive gear. This worked well but I felt that I could have sheared off the pin with just a bit more torque. Starting the saw surprised me because I expected an out-of-control chain saw feel to it but instead I was pleased with the speed and overall stability. I typically have been cutting 8 inch spruce beams. I always nail or clamp a fence to the beam to guide the saw. This allows me to concentrate on pushing the saw without worrying where it is going. Crosscuts (6 to 7 seconds per inch on my 8" beams) seem to take less effort than rips as I will often find myself pushing the saw hard on a long rip to keep things moving. The cuts are sometimes hard work -but a breeze compared to any work with a handsaw on the same piece of wood. Again, the Prazi beam cutter is not a miracle tool: you still have to keep it sharp and oiled, you have to make sure your saw's plate is at 90 degrees to the blade. I draw a line where I anticipate the blade will enter the wood and then, after a few moments cutting, verify that the blade entered the wood at the angle I desired. You may have to shim under your plate to achieve the desired results but I find that at the bottom of an 8 inch beam, the blade usually enters the wood within an eighth of an inch of my target. When I am careful I can get the far end of the blade within a sixteenth. Once the cut is underway, the blade hold fairly true to a plane and does not wander from the top to the bottom of a cut as is typical of a reciprocating saw in a deep cut. The resulting cut is chain-saw smooth. That is to say that it is a bit bumpy and yet consistent. My blade creates ridges and valleys about a sixteenth of an inch high and wide across the cut. It can easily be smoothed with a few passes of either a power plane or a block plane which will produce a very respectable finish. There is no way to get as good a cut with a regular chain saw. It just jumps around too much and the cutting angle is usually inconsistent. I know this first hand. By and large, when I need to cut a beam I use the Prazi beam cutter. I will not go back to any of the hand tools I used or even the "cut both sides half way with a circular saw" method because the results I get with the beam cutter are better. Not perfect, and not effortless but better and faster. Bottom line: if you need to cut beams, buy it. The price is right. So it may not be a miracle tool but it is somewhat of a God send. Other notes: You must remember that your converted saw is no longer the safe worm drive circular saw it once was. There is no blade guard that automatically sweeps down every time you finish a cut. The saw is long and can easily slice through a saw horse, work boot or thigh should one get in its path. Cuts must be planned more carefully and the setup should be stable and accessible. This is a different tool. Take some time to evaluate your safety before using it. Secondly, after you install the beam cutter, you'll be thinking about getting a new worm drive saw so you can leave the beam cutter on your old saw. Finally, when you pull this puppy out of your tool box be prepared because a lot of people on the job site are going to jump back and say "Whoa, what is that thing?" Tom Sadowski
sadowski@tidewater.net
11/23/2002
|
