The time had finally arrived for me to change the rock saw blade, as you can see from the picture it really is worn out! I reckon it’s been on the saw for about 5 years at least and has had some pretty rough treatment. So for a budget green blade it’s done very well indeed.
In the picture the old blade is on top of the new one. You can see clearly just how little diamond is left on the old blade.
Fortunately we bought four of these rock saw blades way back when, from a supplier in the US. Back in the days when the GB pound was actually worth some dollars and the shipping from US to UK didn’t cost the earth!
So now we have 2 blades left, but if they last as long as this one has we will be OK for a long time.
At the same time I gave the saw a really good clean up and mixed a new batch of the coolant I use. 1 Part Metprep to 20 parts water, this aids cooling of the rock saw blade and also inhibits rust.
The saw is going to be used more frequently now as it’s going be used for cutting large rocks down to tumbling size. We used to break these larger rocks up with a hammer, but it’s very wasteful as a lot of rock ends up very small. By doing this on the rock saw we can control the size of the pieces with very little waste. You can find our rough for tumbling here: https://roughrockshop.co.uk/rough-for-tumbling
