Things you have cut up with a "Sawzall"

[Michael Schwartz]

This thread is intenned for humor. What are some of the more interesting things you have cut, or hacked up with a reciprocating saw, aka Sawzall?

Aside from day to day work I have used mine to cut up a large sleeper sofa in half. Cut an occasional mid sized tree, and to bail a out a locksmith.

My neighbors had locked themselves out, called a lock smith, and he couldn't pick the deadbolt on the front door, so he tried the back door and couldn't pick that. So he ended up drilling it out, but there was a hitch. Well, there was a security bolt at the bottom of the door, so at 11:00 in the night I walked over with my cordless saw and cut it in about 5 seconds, and the door popped right open.

The Locksmith was obviously pretty embarrassed, but it was his own fault for not having a cordless saw. I suppose he could have slipped a hacksaw blade under but I doubt he had one. I certainly hope he went out the next day and bought a cordless sawzall :rolleyes:

The fact he drilled it out, I could have done that for them, but he did install an new lock and key it for them that night which I coudn't have done.

[Mark Rios]

My dogs alerted to someone in the yard (that's their job) and I went out to find some meth head looking through my recycle cans for....whatever. I chased him over the fence getting one swing in with my bat. My dogs took off back around the house to the front and stood there barking through the gate towards the front. The guy was running down the street towards my apartments and I headed him off and he ran down an alley. As I turned back to my yard, I saw that he was running to retrieve his bike that he had leaned up against my truck.

I had just gotten my new 13 amp Sawzall as a replacement and I got it out and put it to work. I cut up the bike into 10" to 16" pieces, tires and the frame, and put some of the bigger pieces, the ones that you could tell used to be from a bike, out in front of the rentals that I have so that everyone could see them. I left them for the day to make sure that the guy new that his bike was now not a bike anymore when he came back looking for it.

I've not had anymore intruders in my yard since.



Oh yeah, I used to use my sawzall to cut off body panels at our bodyshops too.

[David G Baker]

I re-plumbed my house in California with copper pipe, I used my Sawzall with a metal cutting blade to remove the galvanized pipe. It took about 15 minutes to make around 20 cuts and remove 80 feet of pipe. It was like cutting butter with a hot knife.
Next to a sledgehammer the Sawzall is one of the best home owners demolition tool.

[Bob DiGiacomo]

I was stripping paint from a 6 panel door and taped a brass wire brush to a sawzaw blade to help brush the paint from the door. Worked out well.:D

[Mike Jones NM]

Here a couple of years ago I cut up an elk with mine:D

[Randal Stevenson]

I've not had anymore intruders in my yard since.



Oh yeah, I used to use my sawzall to cut off body panels at our bodyshops too.

Mark, Methheads suck.

And, you should have worded that last part as "I've used my Sawzall to cut off a few body parts for people"!;) :D

I prefer a reciprocating saw, to a chainsaw. I've cut plumbing, exhaust, tree limbs (galore), porch demolition, cutting up scrap (gutters), fence posts, the sleeper sofa my grandfather brought into the room, BEFORE HE put in the door frames and doors :rolleyes:, walls down, and even used one to cut a panel down when nothing else was around, and we were trying to patch a hole in a sleeper trailer a friend got from an estate (50% floor rot).

Definatley has been one of my loaner tools that only gets borrowed once, as everyone who has used one of mine, wants one.

[Frank Hagan]

I thought I was the only one who pressed his Sawzall into service as a tree trimmer! Besides that, its been mostly demo construction around the house, most recently the soffit in the bathroom and a support under the sink that interfered with the installation of a new faucet.

I will admit its one of the most gratifying tools to use ... those coarse demolition blades cut through drywall, corner bead, plywood and wire like butter ... hey, why did my Sawzall stop working?

[Owen Gregg]

After fumbling with some bowl-to-toilet connector bolts that were 20 years corroded and coated with blue drop in mess for nearly 2 hours, I found myself with two bent bolts that were going nowhere. Sawzall solved my problem in less than 1 minute.

The great part was walking downstairs with blue smears all over my hands. My wife accused me of being a smurf killer.

[Matt Meiser]

Another tree trimmer here. Its a lot safer than a chainsaw on a ladder. I got mine when I was building a Mustang drag car. I put off getting it because I wasn't sure I'd use it much. Its become a running joke with my dad because of how often I do use it.

[Gary Whitt]

I will admit its one of the most gratifying tools to use ... those coarse demolition blades cut through drywall, corner bead, plywood and wire like butter ...
And water pipes................. :(


Oh well, got to learn plumbing that way! :D

[John Schreiber]

The Sawzall. The closest thing to a light saber I'll ever have.

[Jim Becker]

A 2" cast iron vent pipe in close quarters during my kitchen renovation was the toughest. I did try to cut some metal duct with it a few years ago, but that was a "failed experiment"...it cut but the dance was no fun...

[Steve Clardy]

I've cut old truck tires off the wheel, when the wheel was rusted so bad on the inside the tire did not want to come off.

Wheels were going to the metal recycler anyway.

[Kent Fitzgerald]

Lots of tree limbs. Also good for cutting roots and stumps out of the ground.

I once sawed the door off a dishwasher for disposal. Much faster than trying to remove all the hidden screws.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I cut a whole house free of it's sill plate once (with a Milwaukee Super Sawzall). Jacked the house and re-laid the sill plate and well you know the rest.

[Kenneth Hertzog]

I once cut a car in half so I could pick it up with the highlift to fit in the cleanup dumpster and also quartered a freezer to fit into the dumpster. Other than that just the normal items :D

[Glenn Clabo]

A couch...after my new lab puppy pulled the stuffing out of it while we were at work. I needed to get it out of sight...to the dump...before you know who saw it...and didn't have a pickup to haul it. We laugh about it...now.

[Matt Meiser]

Uhh, Glenn, didn't you think she would notice the missing couch? :D

[Kyle Kraft]

I used mine to trim the skull of a buck to make a european mount. It was kind of messy as I hadn't boiled the "stuff" out of the head yet.

[Jerry Spencer Mings]

Palletts. Nails and all.
The problem with mine is it spits out the blade.

[Chuck Saunders]

A guy at the shop borrowed the saw to cut up a couple of Honda Civic bodies to take to the scrap yard, $8 dollars in scrap and he only used $11 in blades.

[Ben Grunow]

One of my carpenters cut the main feed wire on a 200A electric service in an old house with the sawzall (yes it was hot) and didnt get hurt!

He made it thru the ground wire and just touched one of the hot legs when the blade/arbor were vaporized.


Cant think of anything I havent cut with that tool really.

[Michael Schwartz]

One of my carpenters cut the main feed wire on a 200A electric service in an old house with the sawzall (yes it was hot) and didnt get hurt!

He made it thru the ground wire and just touched one of the hot legs when the blade/arbor were vaporized.


Cant think of anything I havent cut with that tool really.


When we had cable TV installed a number of years ago, they guy tried to drill through the main feed wire (thinking it was a conduit) To run the cable through. Still a really bad Idea even if it were a conduit :confused:

Anyway the bit was vaporized, the wire mangled, and he was thrown back a few feet and unconsious, but he was ok. I hope he learned a lesson from that one :rolleyes:

[Gary Herrmann]

Tree limbs. Fence posts.

A bunch of fence posts for my neighbor years ago. When we were done, he went in the house, opened a can of bud for himself, took a big swig and then proceeded to tear the tab off mine. That was the only beer he had left and I was out.

It was hot, so we felt justified in clamping the can in the vise in his garage and I sawed the top of the can off. Wound up losing over half the beer and had to pour it in a cup. Strained the beer with my teeth to make sure I didn't ingest any aluminum.

His wife came out, looked at the can and asked why we didn't just pop it open with a screwdriver. We just stood there and grinned like idiots.

Mmmm, demo'd beer...

She offered to go get us beer since we were done, but first called my wife so she'd come confiscate the sawzall.

Ahh, nothing like the idiocy of men in their 20s...

[John Shuk]

We had some crackheads cutting up 2400 pair telephone cable with a battery powered one. They left it behind and came back a week later with a hacksaw. Not my idea of fun.

[Bryan Berguson]

I "opened" a safe with mine. Perfectly legal of course. My dad had a floor safe that wouldn't close very well because of poor construction. The company would replace the entire safe and all he had to do was send them the handle. No problem, we took that off and sent it to them. Well, he was screwing around with the door and it closed and locked on him. No problem says I. We'll stick a piece of 1/4 bar stock in and with some vice grips locked on, we'll open 'er right up. All was going well until we slid the bar stock in and it knocked off the gear for the bars. At this point, said reciprocating saw (Bosch) was brought into play. He got his new safe in a couple of weeks. :D

Bryan

[Art Mulder]

This is a fun thread, and the stories so far top anything that I could come up with...


Ahh, nothing like the idiocy of men in their 20s...


"I look back with some satisfaction on what an idiot I was when I was 25, but when I do that, I'm assuming I'm no longer an idiot."

---Andy Rooney

Of course, there was the time that I was alone, at home, working on our plumbing as part of a bathroom gut. So I was in the basement trying to take out the old cast iron soil pipe, which ran from the concrete floor, up and on through the main floor. I'd taken it down to the main floor and was now working on the basement stretch.

A sawzall cuts through cast iron pretty easily!

But when I tried to take the top piece down, I suddenly ended up with at least feet of 4" cast iron pipe, plus the closet bend (the bend that goes over and up to the toilet) resting fully on my shoulder, while I was off balance, and I realized that I was doing something stupid.

[Jason Boushard]

stainless steel serving line out of the USS Sipan along with various locker parts for the staterooms and firemain parts. We were salvaging everything we could for our ship. I have also cut up a lots of VW bugs to either replace floor pans or cut up the body so I could put a fiberglass dune buggy body on.

[Brian Elfert]

I gutted the interior of a coach bus with a sawzall. The wierdest thing was cutting the fiberglass bathroom in half to dispose of that. I also had to cut out the fiberglass toilet that had the tank built in. Luckily, the tank was empty.

My battery powered sawzall could eat through an 18 volt Lithium-Ion battery in five minutes. My buddy loaned me one with a cord and that worked better with more power and no batteries to die in no time.

[K. L. McReynolds]

I cut a taper---about 10" long----off the end of a 8" construction I-beam with a 7A sawzall---burnt it up. Just used my other one to modify a plastic milk crate to fit in a smaller space.

[Pat Doble]

My Milwaukee did a heck of a job on a big plastic cooler that was on the 'backside' of the attic access I cut in my garage about a month ago.

[David G Baker]

Installed a new pre-framed door yesterday and used the Sawzall to cut 1 inch off of the header. The new door was taller than the door that was removed. Ya gotta love Sawzall.

[Greg Peterson]

Galvanized pipe.
Flag pole.
Tree roots.
ABS/PVC.

[Tyler Howell]

Lots of tree limbs, 2 roofs for vents, A garage.
Sail boat and 2 sail boards.;)
Lots of demo, EMT, copper pipe, unistrut
Love my Milwaukee Super Sawzall

[Ed Breen]

Back in '59 I bought an Anderson Window wall at an auction, went home took the tailed sawzall and cut out the wall of the old kitchen and slapped the window wall in. What fun!!!
I now use use on for triming trees, cutting metal bolts and general rough work.
;)

[Jerry Thompson]

They work great on fruit cake.

[Steve Clardy]

They work great on fruit cake.



ROFLOL


Well Jerry, dunno if your fruitcake cutting, or the beer can opening post above, wins the title of best use. :confused: :D :D :D :D :D

[David G Baker]

Jerry,
Do you actually know someone that cut a fruit cake and tried to eat it?

[douglas hyde]

I cut up two car frames with one.

[Fred Voorhees]

I got one. I picked up a very used truck bed "cap" made of fiberglass. Had intentions of using it to cover the bed of my truck for a salmon fishing trip to Oswego, NY one year. You know, all of the gear and stuff needed to be stowed in the back. Well, it wasn't worth it and then I had a useless cap in my yard that needed to go away. It did....eventually......in about 100 different pieces.:eek:

[Aaron Koehl]

This thread is intenned for humor. What are some of the more interesting things you have cut, or hacked up with a reciprocating saw, aka Sawzall?

Aside from day to day work I have used mine to cut up a large sleeper sofa in half. Cut an occasional mid sized tree, and to bail a out a locksmith.

My neighbors had locked themselves out, called a lock smith, and he couldn't pick the deadbolt on the front door, so he tried the back door and couldn't pick that. So he ended up drilling it out, but there was a hitch. Well, there was a security bolt at the bottom of the door, so at 11:00 in the night I walked over with my cordless saw and cut it in about 5 seconds, and the door popped right open.

The Locksmith was obviously pretty embarrassed, but it was his own fault for not having a cordless saw. I suppose he could have slipped a hacksaw blade under but I doubt he had one. I certainly hope he went out the next day and bought a cordless sawzall :rolleyes:

The fact he drilled it out, I could have done that for them, but he did install an new lock and key it for them that night which I coudn't have done.
As the first "official" power tool I bought for my shop (just a couple of weeks ago), it's seen quite a bit of use already. (18V cordless DeWalt)

I've cleaned up some areas of my fence with it, cut a couple of 2x4s, de-limbed a fallen tree, and removed a railing section of my back deck, and cut through some stubborn nails with it thus far.

Truly a wonderful tool.

[Greg Narozniak]

Well besides the norm of Pipe, nailes, fence posts, etc... i actually used mine to cut of some Frozen ribs. We wanted to make them and would not fit in the microwave and they were already out of the plastic so the water route was out. so out came a new blade, cleaned it off and went cutting away. The ribs were very taste. yes, true story :)

[Alex Berkovsky]

They work great on fruit cake.Must have been a fruit cake that was packaged in the old C-Rats. Anyone wants to trade a fruit cake for a can of peaches? :D

Note to self... next tool on the list... Sawzall!

[David G Baker]

Alex,
Life without a Sawzall is no life at all! I have the high end one with the vibration damper and multi position handle. Love it.
Don't remember if they were K-Rats or C-Rats but some of them actually tasted like rat. Must admit the peaches were good.

[Tim Mummert]

While working as a pipefitter I was asked to do a "little" side job. We had to cut up a doublewide mobile home by hand. There were cats "living" inside and underneath it, so the state (New York of course) would not allow use to demo it with a tractor....gawd forbid we harm a cat.

We finnished what would have been a one day job in a week...two men at prevailing wage...and burned up about a dozen or so blades.

By the way....as soon as we opened the door to start ALL of the cats ran off, never to be seen again!

[Mike Henderson]

Must have been a fruit cake that was packaged in the old C-Rats. Anyone wants to trade a fruit cake for a can of peaches? :D
Does that bring back memories. Can't count the times I've traded parts of a C-Rat package when I was in the Army. They used to open the C-rat box from the bottom so that we couldn't see what the individual packages were - nobody wanted the ham and eggs - but each box was packed the same. That is, each of the individual boxes was always in the same place in the big box. It didn't take long for us to memorize where the best and worst packages were. When you don't have much, little things mean a lot.

Mike

[Alex Berkovsky]

They used to open the C-rat box from the bottom so that we couldn't see what the individual packages were - nobody wanted the ham and eggsMike,
All you've got to do is add a little Tobasco sauce and they tasted like real eggs. :D Now... trade you my ham and eggs for beans and baby d***s. :eek:

Sorry for taking this thread off-topic. Carry on.

[Dennis Peacock]

Well, let's see....

Water pipe right behind the primary bathtub in the house. :o Water was EVERYWHERE!!! :(

Electrical lines inside of walls...No big deal there since I used to be an electrician. ;)

[Per Swenson]

Real long story short.

I live on a lake.

'Nother redneck gave me a pontoon boat.

20 foot of fiberglass and aluminum, with engine.

Parks it at my dock 3 o'clock in the morning.

I don't notice. Go to work.

One of those maximum rainfall on record days.

I get home to find said boat sunk.

Along with two Marine State Troopers.

With a hand full of citations.

I hooked a come along to a tree and the boat,

winched it out and cut it up right there with my sawzall.

I have not spoken to the nasty lake member neighbor who called them

in 10 years.

Per

[Gary Keedwell]

Does that bring back memories. Can't count the times I've traded parts of a C-Rat package when I was in the Army. They used to open the C-rat box from the bottom so that we couldn't see what the individual packages were - nobody wanted the ham and eggs - but each box was packed the same. That is, each of the individual boxes was always in the same place in the big box. It didn't take long for us to memorize where the best and worst packages were. When you don't have much, little things mean a lot.

Mike
Ah memories. Canned fruit was a treat that I looked forward to after a day humping in the jungled mountains near the DMZ of Viet Nam. Couldn't carry much canned food as it was too heavy. ( carried alot of dehydraded food mixed with stream water).

Always traded my peaches to a southern boy for his pears. Man, that was a treat.:)
Gary K.

[Mike Henderson]

For those of you who never had the pleasure of living on C-Rations, you can see what was in each package here (http://www.homestead.com/gruntfixer/files/crats.html).

I only ate them in training, and especially in OCS - I had good duty in Vietnam (signal corps) and had hot food. Each soldier would get a box and then we'd sit around a small "stove" with a heating pill and heat the main course. Then we'd start trading - "I'll give you this for that." While it seems strange today, some of my happiest moments were sitting in a ditch with buddies, having a meal, and trading.

Mike

[Andy Hoyt]

Mmmmm Beef and rocks! :eek:

[Dave Anderson NH]

Ah, C-Rats!!! I remember when they changed from the old version which had Ham & Lima beans as one of the meals to the new version sans same. With my strange and perverted tastes I missed them, they were one of my favorites. When I went overseas to the great southeast asian war games in 1968 I was 165 pounds and 5'7" and in top shape after humping around the hills of Camp Pendleton. I came home 13 months later 5'9" and 132 pounds. There was just no way to get enough calories to maintain weight. Living in the bush on mostly C-Rats for 13 months is not an experience I'd care to repeat. The occasinal mess hall meal was a real treat.

[Gary Keedwell]

Ah, C-Rats!!! I remember when they changed from the old version which had Ham & Lima beans as one of the meals to the new version sans same. With my strange and perverted tastes I missed them, they were one of my favorites. When I went overseas to the great southeast asian war games in 1968 I was 165 pounds and 5'7" and in top shape after humping around the hills of Camp Pendleton. I came home 13 months later 5'9" and 132 pounds. There was just no way to get enough calories to maintain weight. Living in the bush on mostly C-Rats for 13 months is not an experience I'd care to repeat. The occasinal mess hall meal was a real treat.
Yea Dave...Did they have the dehydrated food called "lurps" when you was there? The only canned food I would eat is the fruit. I can still remember the chilli and beans. Hmmmm:eek:
Gary K.