When cutting sheet metal, it's crucial to use the correct methods to get the best results while staying safe. You may need to know how to cut sheet metal while working on DIY craft projects ...

Metal-cutting, “cold-cut” miter saw. Conventional benchtop chop saws that cut metal with an abrasive disk work fine for coarse work, but are dirty, imprecise and leave hot, scorched edges.

I often make a roughing cut first, so I'm taking off about 1/4 inch on the final cut. These shears can cut steel up to 16 gauge, but you need strong hands to cut metal this thick. See All 18 Photos ...

The fine teeth become clogged with metal particles. It's much easier to cut such a thick piece of metal using a blade with 14 or 18 teeth per inch. Teeth per inch is abbreviated as TPI.

Such a hammer developed to cut hot metal is called, appropriately, a hot cut. To cut cold metal, it’s called a cold cut. Remove the handle from a cold cut, and you've got a cold chisel.

It can cut virtually any metal, at a rapid speed, and the width of the cut is narrower. There is a cost penalty, since plasma cutters are generally more expensive than an oxy-acetylene outfit.

There are other kinds of lasers, but the post focuses on these, the most common ones. Machines that can cut metal aren’t cheap. They start at about $10,000.

Lasers aren’t necessarily new to sheet metal fabrication. CO 2 lasers of 40W are popularly used to mark steel, 90W lasers can engrave steel directly, and CO 2 lasers 150W and above can cut 1mm sheet ...