16 hours ago, DRAGON1 said:

Your wife will thank you for not having to wipe your butt while your fingers are healing cause you tried to "save a few bucks".

Mike, you certainly do have a way with words!

John

6 hours ago, joe the gas man said:

I had a blade break a couple of years ago and the topside of the break came don to the table and got me right in the center of my index fingernail. Pure bad luck?

Probably.

 

Would I have spent as much as 35.00 on a new blade to avoid the discomfort of the injury and the healing process!  

HELL YEAH!  

 

The pain of the expense is forgotten long before the pain of the injury would be.  

And depending on when, how  and just where it breaks in its rotation on the saw things could potentially go worse for you than they did for me. 

OUCH! 

Over the years, several have broken for me. Luckily, they were small blades and no bodily harm resulted. 

Replacing blades before they break is an excellent strategy but, I can't tell when to do it. Other than when they're dull. 

On 1/27/2017 at 9:00 AM, hatuffej said:

Yes, one time a blade snapped and it stopped instantly because it was no longer held and driven by the drive wheel. There is virtually no momentum to keep it going and the blade is almost entirely enclosed. 

 

This is usually what happens. We however had it come out of the saw itself and bounce off the table. A scary moment that does happen from time to time.

I have a band mill and I sharpen my own band blades.
I use the band until they snap. It's called metal fatigue. 

Bands can only bend so many times. I had a 1-1/2"

band sink 2" in a wood beam when it snapped. 

Another time when one broke it wrapped around

a 24" log and lifted it right off the mill bed. What

a tangled mess that was. I do blade welding and

silver soldering. Both work good. When you kink

a band you can fix it if it did not stretch the metal

on one side.