How long should a bandsaw blade last?

[OscarG]

Your poor dust extraction may have a part to play. Speak to Ian but from my limited experience and only with baby bandsaw so far, 10 months sounds like a decent amount of time. Did the blade feel blunt when cutting thicker stock?

Yeah, I've been practising making scarf joints, trying to cut a 10 deg angle on a bit of 8cm wide by 20mm thick pine board turned on it's side and it was really struggling.

 

[paulm]

So it sounds like need 2 bandsaws, one with a nice big 4 tpi blade and maybe a cheaper smaller bandsaw with 8-10 tpi to cut anything thin/MDF stuff. Either that or I'll be swapping blades every 2 mins.

That's actually what I ended up with !

I have a largish startrite with upgraded motor and coarse toothed blade for serious larger work, and kept my old rexon benchtop saw and it has a narrow, finer toothed blade on it for cutting curves and thinner materials.

Saves a lot of problems and faffing about

 

[Jacob]

...

How do you clean your bandsaw blades?

Switch on - hold a blunt chisel or scraper up against the side of the blade as close to the teeth as you can get without touching them and scrape the flat sides. Anything left between the teeth tends to get loosened /dislodged in the process. Only takes a few seconds

 

[DennisCA]

Personally I think bandsaw blade lifespan ought to be measured in terms of proton decay, anything else is shoddy workmanship.

 

[OscarG]

Personally I think bandsaw blade lifespan ought to be measured in terms of proton decay, anything else is shoddy workmanship.

Maybe someone should design a machine that cuts both thick hardwood and thin MDF with protons?

 

[Beau]

Personally I think bandsaw blade lifespan ought to be measured in terms of proton decay, anything else is shoddy workmanship.

Maybe someone should design a machine that cuts both thick hardwood and thin MDF with protons?

Do most folk change blades for cutting different thickness woods on the bandsaw?

Cant say I ever change them for this reason and never had a problem. Admittedly I am very rarely looking to finish straight from the blade so course marks are no bother and never found it harms the blade cutting thin stock with a course pitch blade.

 

[DennisCA]

Personally I think bandsaw blade lifespan ought to be measured in terms of proton decay, anything else is shoddy workmanship.

Maybe someone should design a machine that cuts both thick hardwood and thin MDF with protons?

I'm not sure if you are joking back at me and I am not getting it now, but that was a physics joke on my part.

 

[OscarG]

Personally I think bandsaw blade lifespan ought to be measured in terms of proton decay, anything else is shoddy workmanship.

Maybe someone should design a machine that cuts both thick hardwood and thin MDF with protons?

I'm not sure if you are joking back at me and I am not getting it now, but that was a physics joke on my part.

I was joking yes!

You're quite right, my breakage was down to my shoddy workmanship/inexperience. Dirty blade, poor dust extraction, leaving the blade tensioned when not using it, cutting lots of MDF, cutting too thin stock, it's amazing that 1/4" blade actually lasted as long as it did.

I'm a lot better informed now, which is why I love this forum so much!

 

[paulrockliffe]

I'm no expert, but I wonder whether the reason thin stock can break the blade is because you can push the work through too quickly. If you don't have teeth in the cut acting as limiters, you can end up with the length of the cut the blade is making being quite long and the tooth hammers the wood rather than cuts it. Think of a fine blade with 5 teeth in the wood, you'd have each tooth taking a fraction of a mm on a pass, but a 1 tpi blade with a deep gullet could be trying to do 5mm with each pass, with only the tip of the blade truly sharp, the rest of the gullet is trying to hammer through the stock.

Numbers are pure guesswork, but is that effect likely to be the problem?

 

[OscarG]

I'm no expert, but I wonder whether the reason thin stock can break the blade is because you can push the work through too quickly. If you don't have teeth in the cut acting as limiters, you can end up with the length of the cut the blade is making being quite long and the tooth hammers the wood rather than cuts it. Think of a fine blade with 5 teeth in the wood, you'd have each tooth taking a fraction of a mm on a pass, but a 1 tpi blade with a deep gullet could be trying to do 5mm with each pass, with only the tip of the blade truly sharp, the rest of the gullet is trying to hammer through the stock.

Numbers are pure guesswork, but is that effect likely to be the problem?

I think you're spot on there. I normally cut say 12 to 20 mm MDF or pine and feed it slowly, when cutting this 3mm hardboard there was so little resistance, it cut through it like butter so the feed rate was real quick, maybe too quick. I did notice right before it broke the blade was fluttering back and forwards slightly.

So is it reasonable if you cut stock that's officially "too thin" for the TPI of the blade but you're really disciplined and keep the feed rate very slow, it's possible to safely cut it without damaging the blade?