Little biter

I took the first step toward the roof project today. Went round to confirm the new plan was OK and arrange to borrow some scaffolding poles. They were more worried about a draughty door than the roof, so I shall mend that for them tomorrow. Not one of mine, so I made free to criticise its construction. Part of the roof job will involve copper flashing, so I decided to try out an electric shear I had been given recently to see if it would be of some use. Sure enough as soon as I started it up the blade fractured rendering it useless. The mating surfaces of the mount and the blade both have a kind of serated surface like a file to eliminate slippage I suppose, so I made a replacement blade grinding it out of a section of an old file removing the teath from the front surface. That too fractured, I figured it must be some issue with the way the blade and its mount were interacting so I had one more go at making another replacement and this time sandwiched a shim of copper between the blade and the mount. That faired a lot better and I spent a further half hour fiddling about cutting various scraps to see what I could and could not do.
Sitting just outside the shop here where I have the vice set up as I had a hose running water to keep the blade as cool as possible to avoid having to heat treat it after cutting and grinding. My eyes are still OK, but I had to keep holding the little biter up to reflect light off at different angles to check what I had made.