Hi folks. I am in Australia, so the following may not be applicicable to GB.
If you can locate an Industrial "saw doctor" close by, in addition to offering sharpening services etc, they also normally supply and sharpen/grind/assemble make blades to your requirements.
I got onto a local one a few years ago for cold cut metal saw blades, but they cover all types of blades. They have rolls of bandsaw blade for most purposes in stock, and can cut and weld with a CNC machine with less than a days notice.
They charge for the service of course, but for the small to medium machines their prices are competitive with off the shelf hardware store prices. The advantage is that the basic stock that they use is top German or Scandinavian material, not gungy asian stuff. This means that the blades have a quality far in advance of the off the shelf units. Because the joining is done in a single pass with the CNC machine, the joints are far superior to what most people can achieve at home.
While the saw docs here will work through industrial supply houses, the are also very happy to deal with shopfront customers. Because of the supply house margins and the power of cash, dealing direct can bring about savings of about 50%, which is how the custom HQ blade is competitive with the off the shelf asian ones.
They are also well set up to cope with sharpening all types of circular saw, router, planer/thicknesser and countersink sharpening as well, so it is possible to develop a good working relationship with them.
