I did years of work with a jeweler’s saw, and you can get close to the fine line of a laser with blades not much thicker than a hair. Takes a real touch and ‘feel’ for the cutting action. Even with practiced skill you break those blades.
Cutting 1/4" steel for permanent casting molds with those fine blades required a mental single point focus that I would equate to meditation.
@quinnone2, that’s some marvelous artwork! The happy bear is my fav!
For cutting 1/4 steel I would definitely use a 3-0 or even 5-0 blade. I made a few things out of 12 ga stainless and used the 3-0 blades for that, A good friend was doing only very detailed pierced silver overlay and used only 0-8 blades that are as fine as is available. He got so he was working for a long time between broken blades. I have 0-4 and 0-6 and 0-8 in my collection.
There is Some Stuff that I would soak the blades in as soon as I got them and they would be good to go for years (some are over 30 years old now) whereas untreated the tiniest speck of rust and they would break, and they would rust immediately if untreated.
As I was living in a school bus at that time I would spend the first hour any time I sat down to work freeing up the Jeweler’s pliers as they are made very tight anyway. but on discovering LPS-3 I never had to do so again even to this day some 30-odd years later.
Ha loved when i lived in a bus…miss those days!!!
back in the days I could enjoy my retirement, spend a few days playing with the jewelry stuff, get paid and then go sailing for a week or two. Now I can afford more in money but the body won’t stand (literally) for it.
Interesting, I never thought to condition my blades. I just used a solid lubricant that has a beeswax base when cutting, and could get good blade life with care. Noticing that blade breakage increased with time, I realized the variable was fatigue. Time to put the tool down and recover.
Even the larger blades would get a weak place with the tiniest rust speck. The 08 blades would be useless as you could not even tighten the saw without it breaking, but the LPS-3 has bee’s wax dissolved in it so yes it leaves the blades like they were in cosmoline.
When they were promoting it at boat shows they would take a bare light bulb and an ordinary socket with the wires connected, spray both down with LPS-3 - put the whole thing in a bucket of salt water with their hands and screw the bulb in, and it would light up.
It made a very impressive demonstration!
FWIW, I’ve been playing with copic marker on PG (no sanding) and I love the effect. It’s like watercolor. I’m not sure how long lasting it will be, but my early test pieces from last spring are still holding up nicely.
Nice that been playing around with markers as well…still unfinished proofgrade would be an added bonus, really be enjoying it!