Creative Woodworks & crafts 2004-06, страница 48

The only saw thai thinks it's a hack saw, scroll saw, and coping saw rolled into one.

Like many DIY (do-it-yourself) folks, every project 1 tackle seems to... shall we say, challenge my skills and patience level a bit beyond what I had anticipated getting into when T first started on it!

Things either don't fit right, won't come apart, or they break, or you drop something, or you lose part of something, or you don't have the right tool for the job—so you try to get by with what you have, and you end up with more and more problems! Just seems like something, somewhere usually goes wrong. Must be die Midas touch thing.

Anyway, because I'm also a homeowner and am driven by that I-can-tackle-and-fix-anything attitude, I'm often going from one mess right into another. One day I'm a carpenter, the next day T'm a plumber, the next an electrician, and so on and so forth. (And in my spare time 1 like to try to make things.)

So, whether the drive to fix things and make things is a blessing or a curse, 1 am always on the lookout for handy-tools that will help me tackle die challenges that come my way.

Recently. T was introduced to a neat little hand saw called the Wonder-Cut™. Advertised as "the only saw that thinks it's a hack saw. scroll saw. and coping saw rolled into one," I thought, "AHA... this is a tool made for me!"

So, I took this litde saw and commenced to see if it could, indeed, cut through a variety of materials and be useful to a handy guy like me.

As luck would have it (my kind of luck, that is), the very next day after discovering the Wonder-Cut™ I woke up to a wet basement floor. A faulty sump pump had failed to do its job, and I needed to examine it in order to see whether it

should be repaired or replaced. Usually this is not a big deal, but I ended up bending a plastic elbow joint, just a little too far when removing the pump, and you guessed it... it broke! Of course, the elbow joint was nicely cemented to plastic pipes on each end. Fortunately for me, the pipes were long enough to allow me to use the handy little Wonder-Cut™ to saw them both off next to the elbow joint. Then, all it took was a quick trip to the hardware store for a 39c elbow (and an $80.00 pump), and we were soon back in business.

After that episode, I gave the saw a good workout. It worked great when I sawed through a 3/4" steel pipe, which I used to make a couple of 4' pipe clamps. It was really handy when T cut the rain gutters, downspouts, and drip edge for my new porch. It also worked well for cutting conduit, copper pipes (for my Dragon Breatheatchcr project, in this issue), hard plastic, antlers, rubber, nails and bolts, and wood.

The saw comes with two blade styles, fine (28 teeth per inch) and coarse (18 teeth per inch), each suited for tackling various kinds of materials. A neat feature of this saw is that you can install the blades in the frame with the teeth facing up, down, left, or right. This allows you to get the saw into hard-to-reach areas, and also helps you to make irregular cuts much easier. The pin end blades are 6" long, and will thread through a 1/4"-Dia. hole. The saw has a 2-1/2" throat, is about 9-1/2" in overall length, and is sturdily built for years of use and abuse. Its small size makes it tit perfectly inside my tool box, which is kept armed and ready to tackle projects at home and away.

In my opinion, the Wonder-Cut™ is really a terrific saw. It cuts through materials much, much faster than many other kinds of hand saws, and requires a lot less effort to make its cuts. It's just plain handy... and 1 love it.

4fi • Creative Woodworks S. Crafts June 2004