Cutting Ferrite for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXVII

wet tile saw

One hackneyed (and quite sexist) adage told us that we should "never send a boy to do a man's work." All gender stereotypes notwithstanding, we've always assumed that it meant to assign jobs to people who knew how to do them, not to total amateurs. Years of reading rubbish written by eHowians, however, has suggested to us that it means, never send a journalism graduate to do anything other than journalism... or, in the case of Andrew Mayfair, J. D., never send a lawyer to do anything involving power tools. He proved that point in the HomeSteady.com post, "How to Cut Ferrite."

At its core, this is a simple question. Of course, at eHow.com there were never simple answers; not if the writer wanted to get paid. Any "answer" had to include three steps and an introduction; preferably totaling 300 to 500 words. Mayfair's version comes in at less than 150 words; but sadly, almost none of them could be considered correct. Let's start with Andy's introduction:

"Ferrite is a form of very strong pure iron. Ferrite consists of a body-centered cubic crystal structure, which imparts strength. Ferrite is used in a variety of electronic components."

Mayfair's definition of ferrite, although nicely cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia, is unfortunately not a description of the substance used in "electronic components." That substance is a ceramic made of metallic oxides, mainly iron, used in electronics because of its magnetic properties. And yes, it's damned hard, which is why the OQ asked the question in the first place.

Andy did provide a scintilla of factuality when he told us that,

"If you cut ferrite with any tool that does not combine a diamond blade with coolant, the ferrite is likely to break or damage the cutting blade."

That's all lawyer-speak, we guess, for something far less convoluted.

It's when Mayfair tried to give directions for this process that he incurred the wrath of the local tool users. Here are the "directions" in question: "Place the ferrite on the base of the table saw." "Lower the saw, with the diamond saw installed, onto the ferrite. Make sure the table saw is extruding coolant fluid onto the diamond blade." "Push down on the table saw slowly to force the blade through the ferrite." We have to assume that Andy was confusing a tile saw, which typically includes a coolant bath, with a table saw. We won't bother to explain that you don't "Push down on [a] table saw"; that might be a reference to a miter saw. Who knows what he was trying to say from the depths of his ignorance?

Mayfair's alleged references were all books; all the posts we found online (mostly in electronics forums) suggested using a tile saw. Unfortunately, our Dumbass of the Day either didn't read them, didn't understand them, or just operated on the assumption that another MSU¹ job would fool a content editor who knew nothing about ferrite, saws, or anything else mentioned in the text. Well, it did – but it didn't fool the AN staff!

¹ MSU: Making Shit Up.

DDIY - POWER TOOLS