Thinking about the statements about "HARD wood" and thickness associated with blade breakage:

 

Are you pushing the work into the blade with any force?? There's moving the work into the blade with the speed of the blade's cutting speed and then there's forcing it into the blade. The latter would contribute to blade failure.

 

The hardness of the material should be immaterial. Hardness is only a factor where the blade tooth hardness is concerned. Generally speaking you need a harder tooth when cutting steel than you do for wood but I sort of suspect that unless you are buying specialty blades, they are all pretty much the same alloy composition.

 

If you find that you have to force the cut, your blade is dull or the material too thick for the tooth spacing.

 

If the wood is very thick the blade used should have fewer teeth to prevent the gullets from loading packing which causes inordinate amounts of heat to build up plus blade wander. Heat is not your blade's friend. But a slow feed rate can prevent gullet filling too. 

Edited November 13, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Cliff, I guess hardness of the material shouldn't be immaterial when you talk about cutting using a band saw.The higher the material hardness, the lower the machinability rating. IMHO, the tooth hardness that you've mentioned should have the same level of hardness of the blade itself because it is made of the same alloy composition. I think what you meant there is the tooth's beam strength that depends on the tooth pitch of the blade. The fewer teeth in the cut, the weaker the tooth's beam strength. Hard materials require more teeth to share in the work and a smaller gullet area gives extra beam strength. 

 

Now, even if you have specialty blades with almost the same alloy composition, there are still factors to consider like the tooth design, the blade's engineering flexback carbon vs hardback carbon blades for example and the blade type(carbide tipped, triple chipped carbide, etc.) which were created mainly because of the important factors to consider in cutting the material which includes hardness. Take for example a flexback carbon blade used for cutting soft woods, while a hard back carbon blade is used in cutting hard woods. And if the hardness of the material has not been given consideration in selecting the right blade for it, it will lead to blade breakage or premature dulling of the blade. Material thickness is the basis now in selecting the proper tooth pitch for the best cutting performance. Just like what you've said, the thicker the wood the coarser tooth pitch to select. Remember the 3-tooth rule? A minimum of 3 teeth and a maximum of 24!

 

 

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Edited November 13, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Well I am not sure what you guys are getting at (maybe because I'm half asleep) but as i mentioned before, I used to push the wood into the blade a little , and still do, but at more the cutting rate of the blade whereas before I was forcing it a bit too hard, and it caused a blade to break, so when I got a new blade I decided that forcing it to cut faster wasn't the answer, yet even without forcing it, I'm still breaking blades, right at the weld usually, like one of the other posts mentioned.. Anyway, I havent broke a blade for about 2 weeks now but I haven't had much of a need to cut anything either.

 

Edited November 13, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Charles, I would say without a doubt the blades your using are too thick as Neil Morris alluded to.

 

You've got a new blade coming out to you partner. 1/4" right?

Edited November 13, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Yes 1/4"

 

 

Thanks John you're the best!

 

 

Edited November 13, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk