Bosch Circular Saw

Almost seven years ago, on the eve of my 50th birthday Monisha gifted me a Bosch circular saw. Of course it was my idea and she readily approved of it. I went all the way to the Taher showroom on Prinsep Street and brought it home. But after reading up everything and seeing a few videos I realised this was a little dangerous to handle. Also, I did not have the necessary work place and bench to regularly use it effectively. So after a cursory look at the item I kept it packed.  

A few months ago, Partha my anaesthetist friend, suddenly showed me the photographs of a patient who had chopped off his thumb with a similar saw. It is one of the most ghastly photographs I have ever seen. Apparently the gentleman collected the finger and went to the hospital and it was stitched back. I have no idea as to how it is healing. 

Of late I have been meaning to use the saw. When I discussed it with Kushu-da he said use the stair case as your work bench. Hold the wood with your leg. This was the most practical ingenuous idea to use it under the constraints of my house.

I wanted to make a small vegetable chopping board for Monisha that would be handy so that she could easily chop some chillies or a lime etc on the dining table itself and not bring the big chopping board from the kitchen. This is a daily requirement for her. 

We have some old plywood cut pieces in the house. I thought I would cut a six inch square board out of one them. As it turned out we found a board that is about 2 feet long and six inches wide. I decided to cut six inches off the length to get a 6x6 board. 

To cut a longish story short - it went off perfectly. Well almost. I say almost because I should have been more careful towards the end of the cut. The corner got a bit chipped. But I am reasonably happy that it went off smoothly. 

Ideally one should clamp the wood with vices on something unmovable and then cut. I was using my left foot as the vice. What I did not know was how the wood would react after the force of the moving saw hit it. It did move under my foot. But I managed. 

As I realised the saw has a protective cover kind of thing. It is not a naked saw. Unless one is terribly careless or something slips out there is hardly any chance of an accident. Of course one has to be careful with any moving machinery part. 

I did wear a pair of gloves and covered my mouth and nose with the face mask. But I must say, I was not prepared for the sound it made :-) 

Bosch Angle Grinder

The other day I bought for myself a Bosch angle grinder. Bought it off Amazon through Cloudtail at a cost of Rs 1899. It came without any attachment. Basically there are different attachments that can be used with this grinder. So they gave none. You could want to cut metal, wood, marble, tiles, bricks. You might just want to grind metal. Then there are various polishing abrasives. It is a huge range. However, I feel Bosch should have included an assorted bunch of discs.

The Bosch literature, as usual, was quite useless. I am sure they assume that Indian mechanics who use such machines are illiterate. I had to work it out from poorly made youtube videos. However, once set up it works pretty well. Gets a little hot if you are using it on heavy load - for example, cleaning a cauldron.

I had originally bought it to sharpen knives. Worked perfectly. I sharpened all the knives available at home. The maid servant is extremely happy about it. She was having to deal with dull knives. Blessed me a lot. Bought two attachments to clean rusty iron. Used it to clean an old cauldron. Worked like magic. The cauldron now looks like new. However, while cleaning the cauldron I used the 3M eye protection goggles. This is the first time I used them. Works really well. Very comfortable on the nose, despite my glasses. One has to be careful about centrifugal and centripetal forces, while working on the round cauldron. The cauldron or the grinder can go out of control of the operator. It happened to me a couple of times. If you are novice like me, be very careful about this.