HF Bandsaw blade question.

Beile

Beile

Joined
Jul 17, 2006
Messages
772
The blade that came with my bandsaw lost some teeth in a fight with a leafspring today
toothless+smiley.bmp
. Question, some say they buy blades at home depot, the Ridgid bi-metal. I looked online and they say they have 62 1/2 x .025 x 1/2", the manual says 64 1/2" do they have the right sizes at HD? I'd like to get them today instead of waiting for shipping.
 
Forget the Hf blades and the Home depot blades. Order a lenox Bi-metal blade or a similar type. A Bladeforums search on "band saw blades" should keep you busy for many hours reading. Many industrial suppliers sell these type of blades.The knife supply catalogs have them,too. They are much more expensive than the cheap ones......and they are worth it!
Stacy
 
You can order one locally from a saw supply house or you can order it from here.

http://www.toolcenter.com/BI-METAL_DIEMASTER.html

should cost you 22 bucks + shipping for that length roughly.

It wil outlast any HF or Home Depot blade many many times over.

120V, 1 HP motor, 60 Hz; Blade speeds: 80, 120, 200 FPM; Blade size: 1/2" x 0.025" x 64-1/2"; Cutting table: 11-1/2" L x 7-1/2" W x 23-1/2" height from floor (horizontal), 9-5/8" L x 9-1/2" W x 33-1/2" from floor (vertical); Shipping weight: 137 lbs.

64 1/2" is correct.
 
Thanks for the quick replies, I'll buy a good one but just need one tonight for a project. Is there enough adjustment to use a 62 1/2" instead of the 64 1/2"? I need it tonight and HD is still open here.
 
blub said:
Thanks for the quick replies, I'll buy a good one but just need one tonight for a project. Is there enough adjustment to use a 62 1/2" instead of the 64 1/2"? I need it tonight and HD is still open here.
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probably not. You could try it, but i'm guessing it's not the recommended spec for blade length.

You want to buy a blade with enough teeth that will roughly have 3 teeth on the thing you're cutting at all times or more. Seems like breaking off a few teeth, the blade should still work no?
 
"You want to buy a blade with enough teeth that will roughly have 3 teeth on the thing you're cutting at all times or more. Seems like breaking off a few teeth, the blade should still work no?"

Well it's more than a few teeth actually, it has about ten spots with about 4 or 5 teeth missing and it's grabbing, bucking, hardly cutting and I don't want to find out what'll happen if I keep going. :eek: Thanks for the help.
 
They should just sell those HF metal cutting bandsaws with no blades! Or just buy the saw, and throw away the blade!
 
ok just making sure that you annealed the leaf spring
but yes get a goood bi blade and cut away i get mine in town cut and welded to the length i want with the tooth count im looking for that included a bi8 for my wood cuttign saw 4-6tpi
 
OK, went to HD, bought a blade, they had the right size at 24 teeth per in. It cut a total of 1 1/4" before it was a goner. I had annealed this properly I thought. Last time I went camping I cut up a whole bunch of springs and threw them in the campfire and buried them in the coals overnight and they were still warm when I got up the next day, wouldn't this work? It was a blazing fire and they got to non-magnetic and cooled slowly. Is it the blade or a crappy annealing job? It grinds nicely, are the blades really that crappy? I put it in the forge tonight after burning up the blade to anneal again. The Harbor Freight blade outlasted the Home Depot blade by 10 blanks and a bunch of other stuff I had cut.
 
blub,

there's _no substitute_ for proper bi-metal blade. Good all around blade will have 18 tpi (13 is more aggressive cutting, but it will loose teeth quicker). McMaster, Enco, MSC are some of the huge, reputable suppliers that always stock these in all sizes.

Now, if you have McMaster nearby, you can do "will call" and pick up your stuff in person. I've done that a few times - when buying larger items you save on shipping.
Or not, with today's gas prices.
 
sounds annealed so its jsut that the blade you need you do not have and you will burn through the std saw blades that fast
 
The blade they ship with the saw is just marginally better than the banding strap holding it to the pallet. It sounds like similar quality at that store.

I personally like Starrett best, thought I've not tried them all. A good blade fixes most of the problems with these saws.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
The blade they ship with the saw is just marginally better than the banding strap holding it to the pallet. It sounds like similar quality at that store.

I personally like Starrett best, thought I've not tried them all. A good blade fixes most of the problems with these saws.
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Is that American made banding strap or Chinese?:D
Thanks for the help everyone.
 
There all also dual tooth blades out there. I like the 10-14. It combines the benefits of both tooth pitch in 1 blade. It cuts like mad and I have cut everything from 16 ga stainless to 4" dia cold rolled. Has a couple of skips in the teeth but still cuts.
 
Better blades is a necessity, but you should still not be knocking the teeth off the blades. I got a harbor freight band saw in last week. The McMaster-Car Bi-metal blades were already here. but I put the saw together and started cutting with the harbor freight blade. I cut some 1 1/4" diameter brass rod in to 3/8 inch disks, cut up a bunch of aluminum, cut some angle iron bed frames up, and finely profiled some O-1 blades. The bandsaw blade still has all its teeth, its dull as a butter knife but it still has all its teeth. To aggressive when your cutting is what is probably breaking teeth off your blade. Let the saw do the work, with good blades.
 
Will Leavitt said:
I order my blades from these guys.

http://www.toolcenter.com
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Yeah what I originally said!!! :D Forget the Home depot blades. Those are probably for cutting non-ferrous metals. Might cost you 10 bucks to buy one, but for the 20 bucks you saved from buying a real lenox diemaster blade, you ended up wasting to 10 bucks. Look up saw supply companies or go to http://www.lenoxtools.com/enUS/Product/DIEMASTER_2.html
and check that out. then go to www.toolcenter.com and order one! .24 cents an inch + welding charge of less than 7 bucks + shipping.

if you had not annealed the spring, i'm guessing cutting through it at all with a bandsaw blade would have been completely impossible. Unless you only somehow managed to anneal part of it
 
OK, was going through steel cutting withdrawals and had to have a blade so I returned the Home Depot blades that fried and got a bi-metal 18 tpi blade for $15 from Harbor Freight until I get my good blades in the mail and it cut right through the spring like nothing, no telling how long it'll last but I got what I wanted to do done. Steel is 3/8" truck spring. The little cut towards the back is how far the Home Depot blade got. Thanks for the help.
axethingy.jpg
 
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