If you were going to be making a lot of trade points, which do you think would work better for the job. A band saw with a good metal blade, an abrasive chop saw, or an angle grinder?
I dont think you will be able to cut much with a bandsaw.The angle grinder or chop saw will but dont get it too hot or it will loose a lot of temper.You wont have to cut it completly,,just part way and you can break the piece off with a hammer.I assume you are making them from a old larger circuler saw blade?In the long run the cheapest and easiest way to make them would be to buy some new untempered steel used for making knife blades.You can cut that with a bandsaw easily but it will need to be hardened and tempered afterwards.If you know a knife maker you may be able to do some sort of deal with him to harden your points for you.There are a lot of good steels you could get that would make good points and some of those would not be the real expensive ones, something like 1095 or O1 should work well.You could also score a saw blade with an angle grinder and break it into strips and have a knife maker anneal it so its soft and easy to work with.Beware of newer sawblades.Many of them will have relativly soft steel with carbide or other hardend tips and the body of the blade be not much as far as holding any kind of edge.An old crosscut saw would make some great points if you can find one.They were made of a more simple steel so would not be too hard to work with and about right to hold an edge for a broadhead.
An old crosscut saw blade would be something like 1060 or 1095 carbon steel and you could soften or harden that with a cutting tourch and a bucket of cooking oil.
Have someone water jet em for you.
There are local services that will do it.
Call em and see how they want the template drawn up.
Not that expensive.
They are all the same and have as many as you want cut in an afternoon.
i whipped these up using and old buzz saw blade and a die grinder from harbor freight with a 3 inch cut off wheel
it takes longer to belt sand the bevels than it does to cut them out they were tempered to approx 40-45 rc to sharpen easily and still remain fairly tough
(http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh264/oxbowsteelheader/006-8.jpg)
Khalverson, did you use a template to mark them and how did you get the lines cut so straight?
i made the first one slightly over size and ground till i was close to the weight i wanted and then used it as a template to scribe around
Them heads Kevin makes are great. I have a bunch.
CTT
Water jets work great.We had a Flowjet at the shop I worked at.If you don't know someone who works with one it's like a $150 an hour to have them done.I was lucky I had a bunch of knife blanks and points done when I was working.
Hammer...forge them. Kinda like a water jet $150 an hour :)
(http://images3a.snapfish.com/232323232%7Ffp7343%3B%3Enu%3D32%3A4%3E%3B87%3E672%3EWSNRCG%3D379567598732%3Cnu0mrj)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v110/tippit/Broadheads/5480.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v110/tippit/Broadheads/TeamTippitBroadheads2011009.jpg)
It would be nice to have the money to spend to get some made, or a forge and set up to do that. But until I hit the lottery or something, I will have to stick to the hard, cheap way to make me some. I have a whole lot more time than I do anything else....LOL
:thumbsup:
Charles I've been down this road myself and I made some very nice trade points out of an old crosscut saw blade. I traded for a big chunk of the blade from a member on a different site. I used a 2 blade 125gr. Magnus Stinger as my template then cut them out with a thin cut off wheel on my 4 1/2" angle grinder. Then cleaned them up on an abrasive wheel retrofitted to my bench grinder. You can actually get suprisingly straight lines with the cut off wheel. I cleaned the heads up on the abrasive wheel until I got the weight I wanted. Then sharpened the blades with a hand file, I went with a single RW bevel on the blades. I was able to get them shaving sharp with just the file. My end result was a handful of heads that only varied +/- 1gr.
If you have ever seen any of the heads that ArtB makes, mine look nearly identical. I'll see if I can get a few pics of them for ya.
Hope that info helps.
Thanks Semo. I have a couple of Art's heads on arrows that he has made, but have not seen an unattached head. His are the ones that I want to duplicate, and use. I just went and got a couple of the thin metal cutting blades for an angle grinder. I have a concrete saw blade that I am going to cut up, and tried a hack saw blade on it and it just laughed...lol...not even a scratch. Have to get one cut out and see if a file will work on the edges. And yes, please post up all the pictures you can or email them to me. I would love to see them and get some ideas.
And by the way, I have two full length cross cut saw blades just hanging in my garage.
Doc. Why must you tease me with those, every few months those pictures pop up.
:mad: :mad:
Like you Matty, I would love to own some of Doc points, but I can not afford $150.00 an hour for one....lol
Matty & stringstretcher,
I'm kidding about $150 an hour. It's just not an efficient way to make trade points. It takes me almost as long to forge a point as it does to forge a knife especially to hit weight on a matched set of points. That's why when I give them away or donate to St Judes, I only give One! But I do believe the hammering does put a certain amount of mojo them though ;)
I totaly understand Tippit. And such a wonderful jesture. For sure it would take more than the $150.00 to get started in forgeing just for an anvil...lol. But I can still admire you work from afar. Awesome, just awesome.
I found my pictures of the crosscut saw blade trade points, but sadly I cannot locate the actual points I made. I recentely moved and I know they are here hiding in a box somewhere. :knothead:
I left a tab at the bottom of the head and actually used that tab to fine tune the weight of each one. If I remember correctly I made mine around 170gr. not sure on that till I can locate one and weigh it on my grain scale, but it's fairly easy to achieve near perfect matched weights this way.
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8082/8283560227_c7b54155fa.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78691167@N02/8283560227/)
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8212/8283561815_a0d03c24f8.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78691167@N02/8283561815/)
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8283562639_fa13c84676.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78691167@N02/8283562639/)
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8343/8283563843_cc2dd04919.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78691167@N02/8283563843/)
Thanks Chris. Those look just great.
Stringstretcher
Are you on a dremmel tool and grinder kind of budget. Thats how I make mine. I have used old table saw blades, o2 tool steel/high carbon steel from janz. I just try not to cut/grind long without dunking and cooling. The deer and antelope in WY dont seem to mind that I dont have a clue about rockwell hardness. All I go buy is can I sharpen with files if so good if not then I heat and soften till I can.
Yes Jack, and the half priced ones at that...lol. Could you post or send me some pictures of your points? I sure would love to see them.
I am trying to get a good profile and weight (around the 150 grain mark) to use on all my cane/bamboo/shoot arrows. So any suggestions or offerings is greatly appreciated.
I will send some pictures to your e-mail address if that is OK. I am having trouble with photo bucket it does not like my windows explorer or something like that, never had trouble till today.
I make a grizzly type trade point single bevel in the 190 to 250 range, depending on steel thickness I use.
That would be great. Please put trade points in the subject line, so I don't delete it..lol
What are you guys referring to when you say an "old crosscut saw blade" if you google this for images a few different things come up. I'm sure here in CO I can come across lots of whatever they are. Because jack and I are gonna spend some time this winter making trade points. .....aren't we jack....?
When I say the cross cut, you remember in the older days when you had one person on one end and another on the opposite, one would pull while one would push? That is what I call a cross cut. Some of the blades are 6ft long or better.
Sorry, that was intended to be a PM
Thanks stringstretcher. That's what I was imagining
How much weight do you guys typicly lose going from your blank to finished? after bevels, sharpening and such?
4dogs, it all depends on the thickness of the trade point anf the design. Charlie(stringstretcher) had some he just cut out that are 3 different thicknesses. Maybe he'll post his results.
I have some cut out, but have not put any bevels on them yet. Give me a few days, or until after the holidays and I will have that info. What if found so far is, with .050 thickness steel, and the design that I have right now, yields me a 176 grain head before clean up and bevels put on them. I am sure that .050 thickness will be the best for what I want.
Now, not knowing types and kinds of metals, any metal that will allow me to us a file to sharpen them but still hold an edge is what I would want to use. And the older saw have more carbon in them so they would stay sharp longer. Not like the blades of today, where only the tips are tempered or have other metals attached to them right at the tips.