Best European source for quality resaw blades?

[Mattia]

Hi,

I've been lurking for a while, browsing various topics, but I figured I'd break the silence. Little bit about me: I'm an amateur guitar maker living in Amsterdam, been working out of my tiny student room until now, but a small shop is on the horizon, and a nice second-hand bandsaw (old Cattini in pristine condition, 400mm wheels) has been purchased.

I'm now looking around for a good source, preferably European, of quality resaw blades. As in, narrow kerf, good performance, good price.

Anyone got tips?

 

[Scrit]

Hi Mattia, welcome to the forum.

Kerf isn't really so much of an issue with bandsaw blades as steel bandsaw blades are all much thinner than circular saw blades. I think you'd be as well to find a local supplier of blades, if you can, as almost all blades are made the same way - a length is cut from a long coil of pre-cut and sharpened band saw material, bevel ground, welded or brazed then the weld is ground flat and rehardened. The major differences in quality are down to poor quality blade material and (more so) poor quality of welding and grinding. When the saw is running a good weld will not be overly noisy when going through the guides - a bad one will be really noisy. When I lived in NL years back I found a local saw doctor who bought his blade stock from Eberle in Germany, if that's any help.

For one of the best off the shelf resaw blades around you can't beat the American WoodSlicer blade, however it doesn't have an overly long life and they are difficult to sharpened (in fact most narrow bandsaw blades are difficult or impossible to resharpen).

What materials are you thinking about sawing and in what sizes?

Regards

Scrit

 

[Mattia]

Thanks for the welcome, Scrit.

I'll be resawing all sorts of stuff, really; definites include Maple (bigleaf western, hard, and European), Walnut (European and Claro), Cherry, Mahogany, Khaya, Sapele, Limba, possibly some smaller bits of ebony (3"-4"), some rosewood (old boards of Brazilian I found hiding away). Basically all manner of woods, ranging from the soft (might do some Western Red Cedar) to the very hard. Not picky, am I

Most of the stuff in pieces up to 8-9" wide/tall, for guitar backs (or electric guitar tops), or around the 5" mark for sides. Basically, on the more expensive woods, I want to limit loss to the saw wherever possible. For the less exotic stuff, it doesn't matter quite so much, of course. General purpose blades I'm sure I can find, as a lot of the sawing I'm planning is also electric solidbodies, which means 2" stock in various hardwoods (alder, ash, mahogany, limba).

I'll look around my local hardware joints and see what I can come up with.

 

[Scrit]

Most of the stuff in pieces up to 8-9" wide/tall, for guitar backs (or electric guitar tops), or around the 5" mark for sides.

For this depth I'd look for a 2 to 3 tpi hook tooth blade with minimal side set and go for the widest blade your saw will tension, probably 1/2in to 3/4in

Basically, on the more expensive woods, I want to limit loss to the saw wherever possible. For the less exotic stuff, it doesn't matter quite so much, of course. General purpose blades I'm sure I can find, as a lot of the sawing I'm planning is also electric solidbodies, which means 2" stock in various hardwoods (alder, ash, mahogany, limba)

For the curves on those I'd suggest a 5 to 8 tpi standard blade about 3/8in or 1/2in unless you're doing something really wild.

For longer life you might want to invest a bit more and buy bimetallics (which normally can be resharpened). And a point about blade quality - the best blades have fully ground gullets with no sharp changes in direction or square corners, the cheapest are relatively angular-looking with punched gullets. Also good blades suffer relatively little drift (where the rip fence has to be adjusted to compensate for the blade skewing in cut)

I'll look around my local hardware joints and see what I can come up with.

A few years ago I met a guy at a show from a Dutcgh tooling company - the firm was called Karat Nederland in Nieuwerkerk aan de Ijssel near Rotterdam (?). Don't know if they are any good, but they are a trade supplier and that probably makes them better than the local hardware shops (and boy did the DHZ shops depress me when I lived in your country, the Trade Handels were much better)

What we really need is some inpuut from Houtslager :lol:

Regards

Scrit

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi Mattia

Welcome to the forum.

Cheers
Neil