Making lemonade…. out of lemons.

I am working on a project with my buddy Jim Ojamaa for the lovely and talented Beth Benischek here in Asheville ,NC.

Beth and her hubby Jordan Bates (see his musings in my blog links area) have designed a fence to make the ugly house next door to them disappear.

Jim and I took on the job with the knowledge that the materials required included 200) 2 1/2 inch long, 1 3/8 inch diameter, steel pipe sections.
These pipe sections will stack on treated 1×4 fence elements to create a stacked blind “look”.

I will post pictures of the completed project when available.

We thought dry or cold cut off saws were rentable locally… really the only way to cut so many small lengths when “doing it yourself”. We were wrong…

It was looking like our only option was to buy a $349 dry saw from Northern Tool.

There goes the wages for the job…..

Then we brewed up a novel idea!

We trapped my steel cutting circular saw on a board at 90 degrees to a stop.
Yes I drilled holes in the base plate of my saw.
I built a fence out of wood.
Then used the saw’s blade depth extension as my chop armature….loosened the retaining screw, and carefully let the blade drop through the steel tube… Voila!
The entire cutting job took me only a few hours, and other than mind numbing repetition…. it worked like a charm!
The drill bit in the middle of things is my 2 1/2″ tube length stop.
Simple pleasures, throwing creativity, instead of money at problems!
Cool!
Here are some photos of the set up.