Band Saw Blade Advise

[Reed Gray]

Perfect circles, well never, but close. You do spend a bit more time in prep, but you more than make up for that when you put the blank on the lathe. Roughing speeds are way slower on an octagon than on a circle, and a balanced blank is just smoother to start off with. Time saver for production work.

robo hippy

[John K Jordan]

Hi John, Regarding the Lenox blade, Which 1/2-3tpi blade are you using? Lenox makes some very expensive to very economical blades. Also on Brian`s blades, they must be alternate toothed with a raker between and he removes the raker? Thanks or your help.

This is from Brian's message from 2005:

"For re-sawing I use a 5/8” - 3 tpi hook tooth blade (Olson from Woodcraft). I’ve tried other blades, but this is the one that works best for me. The blade has a three-tooth pattern, Left-Right-Center. The first thing I do is remove every other tooth using a mandrel-mounted grinding wheel (1” dia x ¼” thick) on the Dremel. I start with the first tooth above the weld and work my way around the blade until I get back to the weld. If the blade has an odd number of teeth, the two-tooth gap spans the weld, which is convenient when I sharpen the blade. That makes it a 1.5 tpi blade with a L-C-R pattern. The blade cuts at least twice as fast because there is more room to clear the sawdust. It also seems to cut twice as long before it needs sharpening. This also works for a five-tooth pattern , but if you have a two-tooth pattern (no raker/center) you’d want to remove two out of three teeth to maintain the pattern"

I see he uses a 1/4" thick Dremel grinding wheel.

I don't remember the exact blade I'm using but I'll find out the next time I get some.

JKJ