I would compress it between two bits of thin hard wood and use a sharpened masonery drill at high speed

You must drill a hole without introducing cracks/weaknesses, the hole may need to be reinforced/stabilised

Only tried it once as an experiment and failed miserably, the hole part fell to bits

A drilling holes in glass approach is the one I would start with

Edited By Ady1 on 05/12/2020 23:30:55

I normally drill mine 5 or 6mm, rather than 8mm.
My Manchester Rapidor Minor takes 9" blades, so I shorten what's available; the short remains make useful scrapers etc.

I use one of the drills out of a set bought at a model engineering show many years ago.
They look a bit like masonry drills, and are often demonstrated at autojumbles, and car shows, by a chap who drills holes in files and bearings; he also sells aluminium "solder".

I clamp the blade, closely and tightly, to a piece of sacrificial mild steel using a toolmakers clamp next to where I want the hole. One jaw of the clamp is then held in the drill/machine vice.

Quite a lot of pressure and fairly high speed, to generate a good deal of heat, but not enough to melt the brazing on the tip.
If the sacrificial steel bar is fairly thick, it does help everything getting just too hot, you're looking for localised heating at the cutting edge of the drill; I might try a copper bar one day.

On a smaller scale, for a 9" hand hacksaw frame I bought recently, I use a PCB solid carbide drill, again with a sacrificial backing piece, running in a high speed Meddings bench drill; they are available in sets, cheaply off ebay.

Bill

Blow a hole with the arc welder (plasma would be even better). Grind off the snots with an angle grinder – linishing disc.

Tidy the hole (if it needs it) with a Dremel or a die grinder. They sell little cylindrical stones for sharpening chainsaws which are just the very thing.

Enjoy!

A diamond glass drill will do the job. Or a tile drill.

Steve.

Normally the saw blade in the hacksaw is mounted with tension force. Steel is hard enough in tension force. On my self build hack saw i had the same problem. I had a professional thick expensive blade, but i want to use the same blade as in hand saws. They are thinner and cheaper. My layout is for 200mm blades the hand saw blades are 300 mm long. So i had to add a bore hole and shorten the blade. My setup was then, mark the hole heat it up with a burner to red glowing very locally and let it cool down. It was then easy to cut and boring the hole was no problem. The cutting teeeths near this area are not used and so it is no problem. This is easy to make and i never had aproblem with that.

Werner

Edited By Werner Schleidt on 06/12/2020 10:17:49

The Eclipse HiCut blades that I use in my Rapidor are bi-metal so the main part of the blade can be drilled by a normal drill.

I have a Cole drill. Anyone who wants to experiment with it is welcome to come to Illinois and try it out.