Band Saw blades/speeds

Tell us about your band saw blades (Mine are underlined):

How wide? 1/4", 1/2", 5/8", 3/4"?

How thick? .025", .035"?

# of teeth per inch? 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 10-14, etc?

Wavy edge?

Speeds? 60 fps?

Just in case anyone needs to know.

Mine are the same as yours, Steve, in a bimetal version. It's well worth the extra couple of bucks for the greatly extended blade life.

My wood cutting bandsaw blade is usually fitted with a 1/2" 6-7 tpi blade, which Rick Field recommended to me as optimum for slabbing up ivory tusks into scales.

Steve: Yup, I'm using a Bi-Metal, vari-tooth blade, 3/4 x .035, 10-14 TPI, going as slow as possible for metal.
On my 14" saw, I have a neat Carbide tipped "wood cutting" blade that I use for micarta. Man, it eats the stuff..

RJ Martin

Thank you, guys.

I forgot to mention the bi-metal blades. They hold up much better.

I use the 14 tooth bi-metal,.025,1/2" running at 200 fpm.I use these blades to cut from 1/8"to 1/4" stainless steels".Works for me.

200 fpm? Interesting, I'll give it a try.

I am at present using a 1/2" blade with 18 teeth per inch. The blade speed is just about 5000 ft.-yes 5000 ft. per min. It does a marvelous job of cutting titanium up to at least .1850, 416 the same, 440-c at least of 1/8 , brass 3/8" thick, and does a fantastic job on mammoth ivory to at least 11/4" without heating the ivory and allowing me to follow lines without much effort. I'm using a 3/4 hrp. motor but understand that a 1i/2 or more will do even more. I converted this from a 93 1/2' (14") wood cutting machine. Sure is a great tool Guys!!! Regards Frank Niro.

Wow! I've heard of this concept before, but never tried it. There was an article in one of the knife mags, way back when, that talked aobut high speed band saws. How much "converting" does it take?

Thanks, Frank.

I have tried it, using a *very* dull, fine-tooth blade, and making no other changes to 14" saw. It is called "Friction Cutting".

It works great on cutting stock to length, but is risky for profiling air-hardening steels. If you hesitate at all in the cut, you cannot resume, because it will have hardened.

Because I also use the 14" saw for wood cutting, and constantly changeing the setup would be an annoyance, I decided to leave it alone, and stick to the metal-cutting saw for my stock cutting needs.

Most of the time I use a 14tpi 1/2 inch bimetal blade. I put one of the 2 1/2 hp. DC treadmill motors and controllers on my old 14 inch Delta Band Saw. Even though I am probably only actually getting about 1.25 hp out of it, I can run it as slow or as fast as I want depending on what I am cutting. It works well for me and didn't cost much to do. Occasionally I will use a 3/4 inch 6tpi blade when I am cutting large blocks of wood into scales, but usually just leave the 14 tpi blade on it because I am lazy.
I cut most of my barstock to length with a 14 inch chop saw.
I have another DC treadmill motor that I am going to put on my big drill press, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Varible Speed motors will spoil you in a hurry.
Mike

Interesting. More than one way to skin a ca...er... cut out a blade.

The wood cutting band saw I had had an intermediate pully so that theoreticaly you could change speeds. All that I had to do was remove that pully and use a longer belt. Remember this was not one of those more regular already cutting metal cutting saws.I have one of those also but don't use it much any more. After some use I believe you would find that it is really a great saw and the burring thing created on some metals doesn't really create much of a problem. Yes this conversion was written up in the blade magazine with JP Thomes explaining how he did his after reading about it in an engineering book. That was several years ago. I just could'nt afford another wood cutting saw until a year ago. I know many folder makers are using one of these friction cutting saws. By the way the blade on mine the blade on mine loked like it had the biscuit a long time ago but it just keeps cutting. It will cut curves with the 1/2 " blades as well as one with the 1/2" blade on the slow saw. Regards Frank

Thank you, Frank.

Perhaps the big thing here is finding another saw to modify. Or maybe one ought to just jump in and make changes on the one he has.....

does anyones band saw constantly try to
cut off to the left or right...when trying to make a straight
cut... this is verrrry annoying...and not sure what to do to
fix it.... delta 9" desktop bandsaw.. std blade with lg teeth
that came with it...tried adj the guide pins..no help..tried
adj the tension..perhaps not enough???

Lott, I think you might get a quicker answer on the "Tooltime" forum- I tried to move your post over there, but apparently my moderator privileges don't extend to this forum.