Homemade 18" Slab Saw (Pic Heavy!)

Thanks Scott!

Now taking orders... ;-)

Hmmm, I think I'd start negotiations at $1850.

$1850 seem right. Similar design 16" that Rob makes sell on ebay for $1500.

Great looking machine. Nothing like pride of building something. That is a step above. Congrats Jeff

I would say $2300. And that would be at 10 - 20 per year so the materials could be bought in quantity discount and jigs set up for mass production.

I sell about $5000 worth of fire pits every year and buy the materials in bulk. They sell begin and end of winter. Nice 3 month side income. Weld them
on a large 'lazy susan' jig that makes it easy. Welding is all about the fixture, the cutting and the drilling. The rest is easy.

That is a great home build size project business.

As someone that's done this off and on for years............don't plan on getting rich lol. Problem when asking a lot of money is that then you are trying to sell what's going to be viewed as 'homemade' vs. a production unit with a known reputation and warranty. It's hard to make a worthwhile sum and at $2300 you are only $350 less than a brand new 18" Highland Park and a new HP unit will kick this saws ass all over the place. And that's pretty sad and shows what being put on global playing field with the likes of people making 50cent an hour is good for. They should've already ran Covington and Lortone completely out of the slab saw market and it's probably just a matter of time. Then you have the flip side of trying to come in cheap and end up doing too much work for the amount of money you'll make. Everything in the US is in a total race to the bottom trying to catch up with the other countries who enslave workers. You'd have to have a hole in your head to choose a 18" Lortone over a new HP, that model has totally lost it's 'economical' selling point and is a waste of money with today's globalism. You can pop the sidewalls of the Lortone with your bare hand, it's not a true roller bearing vise it glides on steel, and it's $500 more?

I also don't like the allthread kickstand on the motor that's totally ass backwards it should come off the bottom of the tank if the pulleys don't line up spend more time with the tape measure.

I'm not saying you can't/won't make any money just don't quit your day job lol. Only other thing I noticed off hand was the 'slow' speed so you say of 1" every 3 minutes? Isn't that 20" per hour? Might want to rethink that one. I make mine about 8" per hour. Too slow for some. Don't really care. Covingtongs used to be 10" per hour and that was too slow for some now they are 12" and have even more problems than they did before.

I'd like to add that i've heard a couple complaints about the new HP's, but how many complaints do we hear about Covington and Lortone lol. After looking at them i'd have to say most of it is probably operator error. It is what it is so my as well recognize it.

In all honesty your biggest selling point is that people don't know everything I just told you. For instance i've sold a few new 16" i've built this summer for $1400. I won't be surprised if I have a harder time selling a used 18" HP for that amount. "Oh good lord Charlie, it's 30 years old!!!". LOL. For any rockhound that's been around the block that would be a no brainer.

so 20" per hour makes rough but successful cuts? What blade? Is the motor heavily loaded at that rate?

For some rocks you could probably get away with cutting that fast. Put in a piece of agate that's the maximum size and end up wearing out the blade too soon among other things, not like the saw will blow up lol but this process has been well known for sometime. Might seem ok now but it won't later on, bending, binding etc are topics that often come up.

Most blade manufacturers will recommend RPM or surface feet per minute (SFPM) speeds, but there is less talk of feed rate. the ideal rate will depend on how aggressive (diamond concentration and size) the blade is, and how thick the kerf, and how well coolant is flushing the cut. They can describe SFPM in terms of the properties of the metal holding the diamonds, but they can't as easily say how this changes with the rock type/size. In a way people making construction saws that will always be cutting 6" blocks of granite have an easier design challenge. Lapidaries throw all kinds of rock at their saws.

I have not seen a good writeup of feed rate. You may be right, that tribes of folks cutting certain types of material, in certain sizes, with certain types of blades, develop a wisdom that is inefficiently shared. Then again, some business profits more form faster cut even if it shortens blade life. Some hobbyists are better off with cut taking twice as long and blade lasting forever.

For me, a good test is if I can turn off the saw and the blade still turns for a second or so, and if I can restart w/o having to back off. If the blade screeches to a stop, the feed was too fast. If the saw was able to power through, but cannot restart, then the feed was too fast. If I cannot move the blade easily by hand after stopping in a cut, then the feed was either too fast, or the flush insufficient, or there are alignment problems.

Some like gravity feed (or hydraulic) because the pressure is constant and not the feed rate. Similarly, I think it could be interesting to have a faster maximum rate, but a hair trigger slip clutch. If the clutch just slipped when above a certain pressure, this would effectively deliver a variable rate. But, I think designing the perfect clutch is tricky.