Bandsaw blade advice

[FrikkinDust]

Being a relatively new bandsaw owner I'm after some advice on bandsaw blade selection. I have a Rexon BS10KA which came with a couple of blades, but I don't think they're particularly good, so I'm
going to purchase a couple of new ones from the much recommended Tuffsaws.

Basically I'd like one 1/2 inch low TPI for any small resawing I want to do, and one general multi-use, higher TPI, thinner blade for everyday use (1/4'' maybe, or 3/8''?) What TPI would you all recommend for each of these? Also looking on the tuffsaws site there's Hobby/Thin guage, supertuff carbon, premium, fastcut, sabrecut. I take it Hobby/Thin will be fine? Or is it worth the extra few £ for a higher quality one?

Many thanks!

 

[Glynne]

Give Ian John of Tuffsaws a call direct (or drop him an email) and he will talk you through blade selection.
I did just that when I got my new Record bandsaw and am really pleased with the blades I received.

Glynne

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Get an M42 for general purpose use, they're well worth the extra money.

 

[SurreyHills]

Second Phil's recommendation. I've had other blades from Ian at Tuffsaws and then went for an M42 blade - wow much better all round. Cuts like the proverbial knife through butter.

 

[marcros]

+1 for tuffsaws blades and another +1 for the M42.

 

[RogerBoyle]

Before jumping on the M42 bandwagon ( and yes I do have Some )
Yesterday I looked around on the Tuffsaws website as I needed a new blade for my Bandsaw Scheppach 5-2
I needed it to cut newly felled wood into bowl blanks for turning (very wet wood)
My existing blades are all too big or to many teeth per inch to perform this So I asked Tuffsaws by using the contact us option on the web site what blade they recommended for this
I had convinced myself that I would need a M42 blade for this and said so in my Question to them
I got the following reply back shortly after

"SuperTuff Sabrecut
1/4 or 3/8ths
these have extra set on the teeth so that they can cope with wet wood
a lot better than other blades.
They still give a really good blade life and the extra set on the
teeth does make a difference on green wood - they can be used on seasoned wood as
well but produce a little more waste than a standard 3tpi"

This worked out better for me as I was able to buy both the 1/4 and 3/8ths blades for my saw at around the same price as the M42 so hopefully they will be with me before the weekend

To cut a long story short tell them exactly what you want to cut and they will advise you accordingly but you will be hard pressed to beat the combination of excellent product backed with excellent customer care and very knowledgable people

Roger

 

[custard]

Absolutely, call Tuffsaws and they'll sort you out.

M42? I'm not so sure.

I've tried a Starrett Woodpecker M42 on my Hammer N4400 bandsaw and there's lots to like, stays sharp for much longer than a traditional blade (and a sharp bandsaw blade cures 90% of all bandsaw problems), gives a fairly clean cut, and if you're cutting up fence posts or pallets you don't have to worry about hitting the odd nail or staple.

But...it doesn't clean the sawdust as fast as a skip tooth blade, the kerf is on the thick side, and it needs significantly higher blade tension. I set it up using a Starrett bandsaw tension gauge, what I found was that although the built in tension gauge works fine for most traditional blades, the M42 needed higher tensions for any given size of blade. For example, to achieve the correct tension for a 3/4" M42 blade required a tension that read between 1" and 1 1/8" on the machine's tension gauge.

That's potentially a problem. The N4400's a decent bandsaw, well up to Trade standards and far better than many Far Eastern machine's. But overtensioning can still cause problems, see here for an example

http://www.swedishwoodworking.com/artic ... 0-bandsaw/

So, if you go the M42 route you need to be careful that you stay well inside the bandsaw's rated blade width, because by the time you've tensioned properly, even with a size smaller blade, you'll be close to the limits of the spring and frame.