The best blades generally compromise between strength and stiffness. Stiffer blades also take more power to bend around the bandwheels and the wider kerf of the thicker blades requires more power and takes a slightly wider kerf, resulting in more sawdust and less board. Thicker blades are under more stress from the constant bending and straightening as they go around the bandwheels and are therefore more likely to crack. While you might think thicker steel blades would be stiffer, stronger, cut straighter and last longer, you’d only be partly right. They have a limited remaining life and will invariably break at the most inconvenient time.īlades come in a variety of thickness.
#SAWMILL BLADES CRACKED#
Retire any cracked blades as soon as you can. The bottom of the gullet is the weakest part of the blade and the primary place to watch for cracks. If you notice more sawdust than usual on your wide slabs after a cut, maybe you should consider slowing down the blade feed rate a bit. This is a main cause of waviness when cutting wide slabs-each tooth has a lot of wood to remove on its trip through the log and the gullet can fill with sawdust along the way.
#SAWMILL BLADES FULL#
If the gullet is full of sawdust while the blade is still cutting, wood chips spill over the side of the blade while it is in the cut and can force it to climb or dive. There is a practical limit to how closely the teeth can be spaced, since there has to be enough room between the teeth to contain the wood chips as they are being cut. With the closer pitch, each tooth takes a lighter cut, helps keep the blade vibration to a minimum and therefore ensures cleaner cuts. For cutting hard wood, especially logs which have been down for years and dried out, a close pitch of ¾” will generally work better. This is the most common type of blade and used for general lumber cutting. A 7/8” pitch blade, for example, has teeth spaced 7/8 inches apart. When referring to blades, pitch is the distance between the teeth. Otherwise, you should look for a blade sharpening service that will work with you. If you have your own sawmill blade sharpening equipment, you have the ability to experiment and “tweak” the blade to suit your needs. To make matters even more complex, there are many factors, which make a blade perfectly suited to one type of wood perform quite poorly in another.
There are nearly as many tricks and techniques for sharpening bandsaw blades as there are recipes for the perfect barbecue sauce. Yet, to many, blade maintenance is almost as much art as it is science. The blade is at the heart of the portable band sawmill.
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