Sawing pastic

Any good wood saw should do it.

-- If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Joseph Goebbels

Yes, but Tim asked for the best tool. Surely, a simple handsaw is way too straightforward?

Not really. Like wood plastic rends to bind, so a wide kerf is advisable. Like wood, it's quite elastic, so large teeth work well.

Obviously the acme is a chainsaw, but not many have one

I was thinking more of a thermic lance, or maybe a shaped charge device.

Or, that laser in Goldfinger. "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die."

If you want to go power tools I'd probably try a reciprocating saw ('Sawzall' for them Yankees) with a wood blade. Basically just a wood handsaw but mechanised. They're good for cutting PVC pipe and this seems like a similar kind of material.

If it was flat you could use a circular saw, but I wouldn't try to use one on a curved surface. Similarly it probably wouldn't stay put under a chop saw.

(the OP's picture is of a 6-holed bar of what looks like metal. I'm assuming it's the wrong picture and it's more or less ball shaped)

Theo

On a litter-picking expedition. Well done.

I have no idea what its melting point would be, but keep the blade speed down whatever method you adopt, or the teeth will get gummed up pretty quickly.

I might try a reciprocating saw (with a coarse wood blade) if you can keep the speed down. Otherwise I'd just use a coarse-toothed rip & cross cut wood saw.

You have a vivid imagination! I’ve no idea at all what you’re looking at that is ball shaped. It’s the big railway sleeper sized bar.

You have poor reading comprehension ;-)

I assumed it was the right picture, and it was in fact a huge injection moulded rubbing strake

That looks like re-cycled plastic.

Conventional handsaw should do the job.

An angle grinder would do the trick this is not the usual joke reply as I have seen many builders use small ones for soil pipes and guttering and even cutting UPVC

Ah, sorry. To me 'fender' is a big round rubber/plastic thing:

What do you plan to use it for, OOI?

Theo

Maybe fender is the wrong word but these are used on harbour walls where boats moored to protect the wall/pier/jetty and to present a non-abrasive contact point to protect the boat hulls.

It’s earmarked to make a small footbridge over a ditch on our local coastal path. We collect a lot of railway sleepers for the same job but a rot-proof one in the location we have in mind will be useful.

Tim

I think that the mistake is calling it a "fender", which is often a ball or tubular with hemespherical ends (leading to the conculsion that it is the wrong picture), when "rubbing strake" would be a better term.

Yes, that to me is a 'rubbing strake' - but on the other had the US calls car wings 'fenders' - presumably on the assumption they are a sacrificial item when parking...

I note the Cambridge dictionary online has a meaning to do with bicycles, but does not mention boats or ships at all.

How the mighty have fallen

If you google 'dock fenders' many examples not too dissimilar from the OPs photo emerge.

I have two guitar amplifiers called 'Fender' and once had a GF of that name.

The Cambridge dictionary is for English language learners. Perhaps this is not a meaning the average learner comes across very often? It is not intended to be an alternative to the OED.

ie something which 'defends' or 'fends off'. Originally 'defender' (c1440) and 'fender' in the shipping sense 1626, according to the OED.

Its use in the bike/car sense is possibly one of those words where British and US usage diverged in the 19th century, and the Americans picked a word that now means something else in British usage.

Not to say that you can't have wooden fenders to protect things, but the picture looked like a metal bar to me, something not known for its protective qualities.

Theo

Possibly. The use of the word fender though for this sort of thing isn’t unknown.

I seriously thought my subject line and my photo would have been clear enough

Metal bars of that size don’t float ashore too often.

Tim

He SAID it was plastic though