Trailer Camper Trim Chop Saw Comparo

The real finishing touch on any trailer camper build is the trim. It’s amazing how much the look improves when you clap on the final pieces of trim. This gives the camper a final, pro-built look.

I didn’t have a lot of experience with metal cutting when I started the camper builds. I had a chop saw that I used for rough cuts on other projects, but that was about it.

In particular, I knew that I would need the ability to cut angles to get some nice trim pieces. Researching the options I soon discovered that many people had converted mitre saws with wood cutting blades to metal cutting. When you do this, just make sure the wheel you’re using has a higher RPM rating than the saw motor.

DeWalt general purpose chop saw wheel

Not really know what I was doing, the first wheel I got was a DeWalt general purpose chop saw wheel. I figured this wheel would be worth trying since it was inexpensive and available quickly. I was cutting thin aluminum which I thought would be easy.

Chop saw cuts were marginal, requiring a lot of clean up. High blade deflection led to uneven angle cuts. There’s also the fact that this was my first time cutting angle stock with a mitre, so there’s also some operator error here, too.

The resulting cuts I got from this blade were kinda “ehhh.” It went through the aluminum quick enough. No problem there. The problem with a cutting wheel is that it relies on abrasion to make a cut, it doesn’t have any teeth to really chip away at the metal. The edge of every cut was messy and required a lot of cleanup. It was hard to get an exact placement or precise cuts on the work because there was a little deflection in the blade. Often as the wheel progressed through the stock, it would push off a little to one side, leaving an uneven cut.

The bottom line was that there had to be a better way. Getting decent cuts was a lot of work and required a lot of filing.

Diablo metal cutting blade

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I fitted the mitre saw with the Diablo metal cutting blade for the second K3 camper build. I had never used a blade with teeth to cut through anything other than wood. Would the blade hang on the metal and wrench my arm off? Or pick up the stock and toss it through a wall? What could happen? 🙂

Starting with something easy, I tried a straight cut on a piece of 3/16″ u-channel. Pffff, are you kidding me? I barely touched the wheel to the first piece of stock and Zzzzip! it was done. A beautiful, clean, sharp-edged cut that would require the barest of touch ups. I was in love with that blade from the start.

You can see a big difference in cut quality compared to the image above.
Here’s another join. Super clean and nice sharp angles.
This blade was 5X the cost of the chop saw wheel, but I got 50X better results.

Everything that comes from that blade is beautiful. When I cut telescoping tube with the chop saw wheel, I spent at least 10 minutes per tube filing edges . With this blade, I cleaned up the edges with two or three twists of a scouring pad on the ends.

At almost $50, the Diablo blade isn’t cheap. But my God, the amount of time and aggravation that took out of Build 2 was totally worth it. As you can see from the photos, the trim looks like it was laser cut. Highly recommended.

Questions?

For more information about this camper you can contact me through this page.

My business is selling motorcycle campers and trailers and the gear you need to tow them with a motorcycle or trike. I run two sites: Open Road Outfitters and US Hitch.