Band saw for cutting rock

I need to cut some 1” small slabs (~6” across) of “Marco” reef rock for an aquarium project. Relatively soft porous rock. Is there a band saw at ASMBLY that can do something like this?

How straight and/or precise do your cuts need to be? My first thought is that you should get a good brick/masonry cutting disc for an angle grinder and use that. Cheap metal cutting discs would also work, though you’d probably go through a number of them. But this might not cut very accurately or straight – but then again, our two metal bandsaws won’t either generally; they are primarily for rough cutting.

I would find someone with a large radial arm style tile saw.

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Rough cut would work fine, just needs to be somewhat parallel faces ~1” thick. Just used to raise the structure up so that sand does not cover up the bottom “shoreline” detail.

I would think that a metal band saw would cut through this stuff like butter…

The metal bandsaw blade would be burned up after three or four passes cutting stone.

You need a diamond blade, or masonry blade. Additionally some cutting fluid would be required.

Your looking for a monster version of this:
https://a.co/d/1AyfN2J

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With something that irregular at that size, you’d need to do first passes with an angle grinder no matter what to get more manageable pieces. And even afterwards, the pieces might be too irregular to clamp securely, which leaves the DoAll vertical bandsaw as the only possibility.

I read a little about this rock; it apparently is much softer than normal stone. I wish I’d seen this post before I changed the saw’s blade yesterday. With the old blade, I’d have told you to try it and see what happens; I am reluctant to do so with a brand new blade. And we’d need to consider what the appropriate blade speed, coolant setup, and dust precautions would be. (The DoAll doesn’t have an intrinsic coolant circulator.)

So I’d start by breaking it into more usable pieces with an angle grinder; how that goes will tell you a lot. I would absolutely do this outside with a respirator until you know how much dust is thrown up. Rock dust is a major breathing hazard; suppressing that dust is one of the main reasons it’s normally cut wet.

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Thanks for the responses. I figured it could be hard on a blade, which is why I inquired. I was able to find some flat slabs online after all. Probably easier (and cheaper) than cutting existing stone. :slight_smile:

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