vertical bandsaw blades

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kenny

Joined
Jan 11, 2005
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26
I bought one of those cheap carbon steel metal cutting bandsaw blades from lowes for $10.00. They are junk. What is the best bimetal bandsaw blade on the market? What would be the most versatile "tpi" tooth per inch be? And lastly where do you buy your blades from?
 
I have a 64 1/2" length blade on my saw, like a lot of other folks do on this site. I have used Starrett and Lennox blades with great satisfaction. Cost me about $18 apiece. I think (think) that the number of teeth are variable on the blades that I have used, but suspect somewhere aroud 12 teeth per inch would be fine.

Take care
 
I use Olsen Bi-metal blades and been happy with them. I believe the general rule for TPI is that should have three teeth in contact with the steel. Too fine and it will cut slow - and too coarse will cut choppy and possibly bust off teeth. The lions share of my cutting is on 3/32 steel so I use a fine 18t blade. Last week, I (ok, actually my wife) had to do a long cut on 1/4" O1 - sllllooooowwwwww - but it worked. :)
 
thanks for the replys. It looks like I am going to go with the lenox. I will probably get it from K&G.
 
Thanks for the report on the Lowe's blades. I had bought a couple at Home Depot but will return them today, since I haven't opened the packaging.

I just bought a couple of bimetal blades from MSC industrial supply. They had the 24 TPI bimetal blades which I will use for cutting 1/8" stock, which I didn't see at smaller stores. Also, their search feature is possibly the best search feature I've ever used on any internet shopping site.
 
One you have used the Lennox, you will never go back to the cheaper blades. Different as daylight to dark!
 
The book says to have at least 3 teeth in the material... But from real life experience, I can tell you that for most knifemaking tasks a 10-14 vari tooth will cut the best and last the longest.

I used to use 14-18, and they never cut as fast or efficiently as the 10-14. I cut everything from 1/8" to heavy structural stuff for press dies with this tooth combo.

If you're cutting really thin titanium or the like, then it's handy to have an 18-24 or plain 24 TPI blade.

I get mine from Chuck Bybee at Alpha Knife Supply (the Lennox Die-Master II)

http://www.alphaknifesupply.com

:D

-Nick-

http://www.wheelerknives.com
 
Don't tell Nick but he is one of our Beta Testers. ;)

We've been playing with different blade widths and tooth configurations in an attempt to find the optimum blade for knifemakers. In the perfect world everyone would change their bandsaw blades when they switched materials thicknesses. My experience has been knifemakers will continue to use a bandsaw blade even after it is missing a "few" teeth. They get a rhythm of the bare spot and relieve pressure at that moment, then reapply pressure after the toothless spot has gone past.

I learned the rule "at least three teeth in the cut" early and I tried to stick to it. I bought some Lennox Vari-Tooth and they worked great. Vari-Tooth blade have different tooth sizes on the same blade. The blade Nick is using is 10 tpi for one inch and then 14 tpi the next inch. The intent of Vari-Tooth was to make a blade that would cut a broader spectrum of material thicknesses. However, on the larger Vari-Tooth size violated the three teeth in the cut rule. But the blades cut like mad. I noticed when teeth came off the blade it was always the smallest teeth first.

Finally I talked to an engineer at Lennox and he explained what was happening. The primary reason bandsaw blades loose their teeth is a condition called "overloading the gullet". When a bandsaw makes a cut the gullet of the tooth is subjected to lots of pressure. Sometime the pressure can be in the 1,000's of lbs per square inch. If the gullet of the tooth is filled with chips, the pressure goes way up and the tooth is sheared off. The smaller teeth have the smallest gullet so they fill up the fastest. The smallest teeth also have the smallest cross section. The combination of the small gullet filling with chips against a small cross section causes the teeth to come off fastest.

The other end of the spectrum is using too big a tooth. Control goes away because of the roughness of the cut and safety becomes an issue.

With this information I bought larger tooth blade and gave them to knifemakers and asked for their feedback. The blades worked better but still had problems with the teeth coming off. After a few iterations I got to the configuration that Nick and other knifemakers tested. It seems to be a good compromise between smooth cutting and blade life.

The next step in our process will be cryogenics. We will buy two blades. One will be soaked in liquid nitrogen. Both blades will be used on the same machine and the number of cuts will be counted. If the blade soaked in liquid nitrogen makes more cuts, we will offer all our blade this way.
 
Oh yea, Chuck asked me to do a nitrogen dip on one of the blades I got from him... only *problem* with that, is I'm still using the first of five blades I got from him :D :D :D

When this one starts to crap out, I'll do a nitrogen dip on one for kicks.

Oh, btw- I've learned much of what Chuck mentioned from a Lennox man over the phone... but wasn't smart enough to repeat it all ;) So I'll just second what Chuck said! :)

-Nick-
 
I would just like to add that the Starrett vari-pitch blades work quite well on my vertical saw. I think that is due to the fact that much of the work I do on the vert is thin. Using a Lennox on the horizontal saw seems to work the best.
 
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