Buying a Reel of Bandsaw Blade

[Alan GirvanParticipant @alangirvan88520]

Hi,

I am looking for advice on buying a reel of bandsaw blade so I can make my own blades for my 6×4 vertical horizontal bandsaw and what number of teeth would be best for cutting 6×4 mild steel. I will be silver soldering the reel of blade. I enjoyed Mr Crispins videos on YouTube but he hasn't posted any in a long time, does anyone know why, I hope he is ok!

Thanks as always in advance, Alan.

[Alan GirvanParticipant @alangirvan88520]

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

I was lucky to buy a couple of reels for wood at a knock down price.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

The saw company in Bedford induction weld their blades, I wouldnt silver soldering the blade I wouldnt think it would not be strong enough. I cut steel with a 24tpi or 18tpi depending on size with no issues. 6tpi skip tooth will work better for your 6 x 4 assuming you mean inches.

Martin P

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Posted by martin perman on 27/05/2019 18:56:44:

The saw company in Bedford induction weld their blades, I wouldnt silver soldering the blade I wouldnt think it would not be strong enough. I cut steel with a 24tpi or 18tpi depending on size with no issues. 6tpi skip tooth will work better for your 6 x 4 assuming you mean inches.

Martin P

[Martin Hamilton 1Participant @martinhamilton1]

I use 14 tpi blades on my metal cutting bandsaw, i broke the blade one weekend & needed to finish what i was doing quickly. I silver soldered the joint just to get the job finished, several years on the blade is still in use with no problems at all. I didn't just butt the joint but ground a bevel on both ends of the joint so there was a small splice joint.

[Martin Hamilton 1Participant @martinhamilton1]

That is exactly the way i did my blade that is shown in the video.

[Douglas JohnstonParticipant @douglasjohnston98463]

Silver soldered blades work every bit as well as welded ones, I have been doing it for years and have never had a joint fail. Just a decent scarf joint as mentioned above does the trick. I overlap the scarf joint and place a very small piece of silver solder between the ends and flux the joint.  With everything in a simple jig to keep things in line I use two of the tiny butane torches ( the kind poncy chefs use in the kitchen ) above and below the joint and wait a few seconds until the solder fills the joint.

Doug

Edited By Douglas Johnston on 27/05/2019 19:59:22

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

Hi Alan, I have a couple of coils of 3/16 bandsaw stock, eclipse, 32 tpi, perfect for cutting steel.

PM me if it's of interest to you.

I built a blade soldering jig recently and silver soldering works perfectly. Just needs a long scarf joint.

Regards Mick

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

If you get any sort of decent life out of a blade buying a coil isn't really worth it these days. Seems that you can get a whole coils worth of good quality welded to length blades for around the same, or less, than you'd have to pay for the coil at retail. Unless you have made the jig and practiced the pro blade will be rather better than what you can do.

After obtaining my Startright vertical saw with built in blade welder I obtained some coils off E-Bay for 1/2 list or under. Reasonable thing to do at the time as the mail order market hadn't really happened for onesie – twosie quantities of good blades and the nearest pick-up source was some 25 miles away. In the intervening time mail order prices have halved in real terms and the local source has up sticks and moved to about a mile down the road. I have rolls in about 5 or 6 pitches and, probably make one or two blades a year. Objectively the investment in time to make them and money for the stock hasn't been worth it.

Don't compare a professionally made blade with the import ones that come as standard with home-shop priced saws. Even though the low end import blades are better than they were they are still not that good and work out expensive per hour of sawing time.

Clive

[Martin Hamilton 1Participant @martinhamilton1]

The silver soldered joint is probably better than welded blades as its done at a much lower temperature than the welded joint. Welded joints nearly always seem to be more brittle to me as the blades nearly always break at the welded joint & when you look at the break in the blade it appears to have a brittle look at the failed weld.

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