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Starter Equipment Advice

A

architect

Super User
I'm building my equipment list and had decided on a Primeweld TIG machine thanks to @David_R8 post.

I'm looking for suggesting on a first band saw. After speaking to @Brent H in person I decided this would be good starter and quiet tool for my garage while being friendly to my neighbors in the city. I notice a horizontal vertical bandsaw is quite popular. We don't have a Harbor Freight here so can anyone recommend a Canada brand/model that would be good starter but also be useful for a bit?

Also looking on suggestion on a taping holes. Any brands of taps recommended here? Manual or with power drill?

Looking at also either an Antra or Yesweld helmet.

Thanks!
 
I'm certainly not an expert but I like my 4x6 horizontal saw that I found used. Mine is an old Enco brand but KMS and Busy Bee have them new. They are all pretty much identical as far as I know.
I will leave the tap recommendations to the experts. :)
I recently bough an Esab Savage A40 helmet and am really pleased with it.
 
For a small band saws unless you go a bit exotic and rare you have pretty much same construction of 4x6 and same construction of 7x10 for last 40 years or so with most parts that interchange. Both are good machine choices. Obviously bigger one can do bigger things. Since they are all essentially clones of each other it does not matter which brand you pick (I guess there can be small differences in quality but nothing major). They can also be had used for much lower price & a great deal unless you buy some total beater unit.

Taps are a broad topic - for general use in soft metal cheap set of taps and dies from Canadian tire work quite well - do not go cheaper as some may be "malformed" and total garbage. You can get a bit better set from usual brand names such as Irwin or Canadian industrial brand "westward". Dewalt and others also make these. You can get some off eBay through careful getting used ones as a dull tap is something that should be thrown away in scrap HSS pile (I assume it is too small to even think of sharpening). I got lots of new taps off eBay, many made in US with some sizes == lifetime supply. Given how much a tap lasts in mild steel a set will last for a long time for homeowner use. There are three taps per size - usual sets contain middle tap in every common size. This is a topic books where written about so too broad for a message board to do more then a scratch.

I have Antra helmet and it feels good & had it for two years plus. Good basic helmet. Main complaint is battery change is complex.
 
I would suggest name brand taps such as Dormer, Cleveland Twist Drill, Nachi, Butterfield etc. over Canadian Tire branded. Buy once cry once. As for manual or power drill. By manual I assume you mean hand tapping. There is a difference between a hand tap and a machine tap. Hand taps having four flutes and machine taps having either two or three flutes. You can tap by hand with a machine tap, but not a good idea to power tap with a hand tap.
 
Thanks. I realize my tap question touches both a broad and deep topic. I was just trying to get sense of what people did when they started off tapping holes and what they realize they should have done instead? I'll be looking to tap mild and stainless steel to begin with and just trying to see if the best approach is to tap by hand and buy related tools to begin with or better to invest into machine taping makes more sense. Info on particular brands and sets is helpful.
 
Generally machine tap is a tap that either shoots chips up (spiral) or down (gun type) while hand tap just places chips in the space between flutes.
See pictures here https://www.triumphtool.com/metal-working-tools-blog/picking-the-right-tap-in-metalworking/

You can use all sorts of machine taps in hand tapping except these that have very little clearance - i.e. they are shaped like bottoming taps. May require more power.

Unless you buy specialty taps you will not see machine taps.

Thread forming taps definitely would be hard to use in hand operation.

You may use "hand taps" for machine tapping but you may be more limited - i.e. where does the chip go? Relief angle may limit your top speed etc. BUT straight tap is excellent for power tapping cast iron!

Tapping holes is a book topic.
 
I've got a ton of taps from my obsession of collecting GTD tap handles, I would by a set cheap either on market place or ebay to get the handles so I collected a pile of taps. I have that CT set to run through a messed up hole and a HSS for cutting a new hole, if I was to do it over I would buy that CT Maximum set on sale for easy stuff and buy high quality taps as needed through KBC or Travers.
 
What ever you do, DO NOT buy tap and die sets from Princess Auto. The set I got 10 (20?) years ago turned out to be useless. You can't even chaise a thread with them. I don't have issues with the Craftsman tap set I got from CT apart from the tap handle being junk.
 
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China (and even Japan but earlier) made crap dies and taps about 15-20 years ago. It is very rare to see these today but does happen - I saw it at KMS in Calgary! I got some spiral taps from China in metric sizes and they were all OK.

I got lots of taps and dies - well over a 1000.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm leaning towards a drill press and the King 13" seems like a good starter as I can't seem to find any other press with low RPMs. Canada Tire doesn't appear to have any machine tap bits so I'll source from elsewhere.
 
architect said:
Thanks for the replies. I'm leaning towards a drill press and the King 13" seems like a good starter as I can't seem to find any other press with low RPMs. Canada Tire doesn't appear to have any machine tap bits so I'll source from elsewhere.
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I picked up a set of taps and drill bits from a local Sowa dealer last year. They have different grades so you can choose what you want to spend. They put them all in one index so the drill needed for the tap is next to the tap. Slick setup.
 
The taps supplied by Sowa are excellent quality and value IMO. The slight downside is they are a bit more effort to get them. I wish KBC carried the line for flat rate shipping but they don't. In Calgary DMH is a distributor & possibly so is Thomas Skinner. You just call them with PN's but have to pick up. Usually they are stocking items pretty often.
http://www.sowatool.com/Product/14/266/2940
 
I'm adamantly opposed to buying tools from big box stores (especially department stores) that re-brand them with their own name. Craftsman (sorry guys) always fell into this category for me. There's just something head-scratching about buying a torque wrench from a store that also sells lingerie.

Having said this my best tap set ever came from a garage sale and was a Canadian Tire MasterCraft "Premium" set, That was twenty years ago, and they are still going strong. I've broken a few, but when you consider they get used probably once a week, that's not bad. I've upgraded to ratcheting handles from the ones in the set, but other that the set is my go-to.

I could never figure out why they were so good as I bought them on sale and out of desperation on a weekend when everything else was closed. Then a fellow I knew who worked for the old House of Tools told me they were made by the same company that made Triumph ThunderBits, which for me have been indestructible. I got those bits from House of Tools twenty years ago as well—still haven't broken one.

As stores change manufacturers you occasionally find a great set that's well made at a great price. And as manufacturing processes change what used to be bad brands can become good and vice versa. You're doing the right thing by asking around on the forum, because you may also learn about brands you could encounter at garage or estate sales. Some of those old sets are still better than many new sets.

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So is the latest CT set still the same manufacturers? From what I understand these are hand sets and won't work well for power tools or presses? At $70 maybe worth for me to play around on test pieces and just learn without worrying about ruining anything.

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architect said:
So is the latest CT set still the same manufacturers? From what I understand these are hand sets and won't work well for power tools or presses? At $70 maybe worth for me to play around on test pieces and just learn without worrying about ruining anything.

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They are hand sets, true. Sorry I don't have any intell as to quality. Mine are 20 yrs old., and I suspect CT changed manufacturers a dozen times since then. It's just an example of how sometimes a gem can be found accidentally.
 
It seems like a few people have had no problems with CT sets for simple things so I'll jump on the sale. I'll purchase specific high quality ones for the drill press once I get deeper understanding of how all this work. Thanks a lot for the advice!
 
CalgaryPT said:
Craftsman (sorry guys) always fell into this category for me. There's just something head-scratching about buying a torque wrench from a store that also sells lingerie.
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oooops….. I said Craftsman when I meant to say Canadian Tire MasterCraft.
 
Personally I would buy only the taps I need, the whole set is likely to be mostly unused.
I buy individual spiral point (through hole) and sprial flute (blind hole) taps. If inferial I get from KBC, if metric I get them from Aliexpress. I use these by hand sometimes, mostly in my UPT or with a cordless drill.
By buying only the sizes you need you can afford to buy 2 at a time, esp. the smaller ones.
You also need decent charts, e.g. metric-tap-and-clearance-drill-sizes.pdf (fbabolt.com.au) gives you drill size depending on material, makes a huge difference in tappability with lower risk of breakage.

gerrit
 
gerritv said:
Personally I would buy only the taps I need, the whole set is likely to be mostly unused.
I buy individual spiral point (through hole) and sprial flute (blind hole) taps. If inferial I get from KBC, if metric I get them from Aliexpress. I use these by hand sometimes, mostly in my UPT or with a cordless drill.
By buying only the sizes you need you can afford to buy 2 at a time, esp. the smaller ones.
You also need decent charts, e.g. metric-tap-and-clearance-drill-sizes.pdf (fbabolt.com.au) gives you drill size depending on material, makes a huge difference in tappability with lower risk of breakage.

gerrit
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How do you determine quality from Aliexpress? I shop a bunch of stuff there and do much research but for taps I'm very new and no idea how to tell are solid.
 
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