wood bandsaw blades

CWendling

CWendling

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Sep 10, 2005
Messages
528
Anyone use carbide tipped blades like the resaw king, lennox diemaster/trimaster for cutting stabilized woods? I also use a fair amount of mesquite which is pretty hard on blades. Do they last longer? Enough to justify the additional cost?
 
Honestly, i prefer the timberwolf. I ran a trimaster for a while, but in my opinion its not worth the risk. Hard woods that arent always perfectly square means sometimes there is a catch, and a ruined carbide blade ruins your week.

Timberwolf blades last a long time and work great, but are 1/10 the cost and messing one up isnt a big deal.

If you run a lot of clean, domestic wood carbide is a great choice. For what knife makers do, not my first reccomendation
 
I run a Tri-Master blade. I do agree that a good quality non-carbide blade like Timberwolf is a very economical alternative. It mostly depends on the quantity of wood you cut.
 
I've been running a resaw king through ironwood, manzanita and stabilized oak for about a year. Very nice so far.
I'm cutting logs down to blocks.
 
Under another thread... I posted a question on bandsaw blades as well:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bandsaw-blade-configuration.1609938/

And yesterday, I found out what the deal is. It seems there's (basically) two kinds of bandsaw blades: "wavy", and "raker" type teeth configuration (as well as TPI - 'teeth per inch'). "Raker" is the one left, one straight, and one right tooth configuration, and wavy just what it implies.

My problem was that I was using a raker blade to cut steel. Apparently that's not a good idea especially w/18 TPI.

For the OP, especially if you have the 64.5" x .50" blades, the raker 18 TPI will cut mesquite quite well. That's what I have in the shop for just wood/organic cutting and it cuts like the devil... that's all I use it for and the blade stays really sharp. I even inlet fo kitchen knives w/it.

Here's a good explanation of it all...
https://www.kmstools.com/blog/choosing-bandsaw-blades/
 
Back when we sold wood we used two 18" bandsaws. One saw had a carbide tooth blade and the other saw had a high carbon blade. Any wood that was suspect of having foreign debris was cut on the saw with the high carbon blade.

The carbide tipped blades would always last more than a year of use. For us the carbide tooth blade was definitely cost effective.

Chuck
 
ive been using the timberwolf blades, 3tpi and get pretty decent use out of them for stabilized wood, but mesquite and ironwood sure kill them. Thats why i was considering a CT blade. its a 14" (93.5" blade) saw. I do harvest a fair amount of my own mesquite burl to cut into blocks. I should quit using ironwood, but its just too darn purty
 
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