Your Letters

Regarding the ad for the Kennedy power hacksaw featured in Summer Fun (CM, August 2017), I rescued mine from a skip about 20 years ago minus its motor and conrod. Since I got it running, it has done everything asked of it. In fact, I used it only yesterday!

I’m not so sure about the description of its £23.13s price as being “relatively modest”. As a 20-year-old factory worker in 1964 with a wage packet of just under £8 before deductions, I certainly couldn’t have afforded one at the time, nor I reckon would many of the home mechanics of the day. I imagine the ad was primarily aimed at mid-sized workshops or garages.

On the subject of old machinery, I also have an Atlas 5in lathe that I bought 53 years ago and has proved time and time again to be the best purchase I ever made. If there’s one piece of machinery that you should have in your workshop it’s a lathe – mine has kept everything from a spin-dryer and a concrete mixer to numerous cars and motorcycles of friends and family from going to great scrappy in the sky! Mick Gregory I am pleased to tell you that the Kennedy power hacksaw is the best thing since sliced bread! I bought mine secondhand in the 1980s. It is now an almost essential piece of equipment for anyone with a modelmaker’s lathe. A small lathe will only accept a limited diameter of material in the headstock mandrell, which means that anything larger has to be sawn off a stock bar before it can be mounted in a chuck – imagine having to hand-hacksaw a piece of 1in-diameter brass or steel! However, the Kennedy saw is useful for sawing steel angle up to 2in.

In addition, standard saw blades can be used, including those broken when using the handsaw! David Born