TUTORIAL: Are you using the wrong band saw blades? (The best setup for woodworking)

hi I'm James Hamilton from stuffing ups woodworking Journal and today I'm going to help you choose the right bandsaw blade there are a lot of factors to consider when you choose a bandsaw blade and making the wrong choice can have a dramatic effect on your saws operation if you're having trouble cutting straight or your saw cut slowly or leaves a ragged surface you probably just have the wrong blade installed you can get a little bit confusing when you look at the labels on the boxes so let's look at the most important factors to consider when you buy your next blade the most common blade materials you're likely to have to choose from our carbon steel buy metal and carbide carbon steel blades are the most common this is the one that you're probably going to use on your saw they're economical and if they're made properly they stay sharp a long time buy metal blades are a little bit different in that they have a harder steel strip welded to the front where the teeth are so they last longer but they're often significantly more expensive and while bi-metal blades are used for woodworking they're more often used for cutting metal finally carbide blades are mostly steel but they have little carbide teeth welded on like a table saw blade but they stay sharp a really long time the problem is they're hard to find in widths narrower than half an inch which is too wide for many curves and they're about ten times as expensive as steel toothed blades that's why they're generally just used for reefs on thick materials these terms are usually applied to carbon steel blades and they refer to the temper applied to the back side of the blade a hard back blade is heat treated all the way through that makes them stiffer so they'll cut straight lines with less drift they're an excellent choice for ripping or cross-cutting or for resawing or for joinery cuts such as Tennant's flex back blades on the other hand are only heat treated at the teeth leaving the back more flexible so it will better absorb the stresses of cutting curves they may drift a bit more on the straight cuts but there are far better suited for the tight curves most books and articles tell you to use the widest blade you can for the radius that you're cutting at any particular time they say that because a wider blade works like the rudder on a ship which kind of guides your cut helping you to stay on course you can make a straight cut much easier with the half-inch wide blade then you can with a quarter inch wide blade likewise a gradual curve is easier to make smoothly with a 3/8 inch wide blade than it is with a 3/16 the reason for this is because do wider the blade is it prevents you from over correcting while you steer whether you're going straight or around a curve if you have a very narrow blade you're likely to correct much easier ending up with a ragged cut than if you're working with a wider one the most common tooth geometry you're likely to encounter our standard hook or skip tooth blades standard teeth are evenly spaced with zero rake meaning the cutting faces are parallel to the boards that you're cutting skip tooth blades have every other tooth missing which creates wider gullets between them than would otherwise be possible with narrow blades where the gullets can only be so deep hook teeth blades are very aggressive because the cutting face of each two of angles downward toward the surface of the workpiece wide blades usually come with hook teeth because they're most often used to cut thick stock where fast cutting is important to keep the blade from remaining in the kerf too long and potentially overheating usually the narrower the blade the more teeth per inch but skip tooth configurations make it possible to have fewer teeth on narrower blades and the fewer the teeth the wider the gullets between them wider gullets clear the dust more effectively now this is critical because heat is your enemy an overheated blade will dull quickly and a dull blade is not gonna cut straight blades with too many teeth also cut more slowly which causes the operator to apply more pressure potentially flexing the blade and creating a dish cut I found that a good balance to clear the chips effectively is a 3-2 pitch blade if I'm working with half finn's or thicker material changing a bandsaw blade is a pain in the butt so I like to do it as little as possible unfortunately there's no single do-it-all bandsaw blade that you can just put on your saw and leave there but you don't necessarily have to have a different blade for every curve you're gonna cut it depends on the type of work you do most often you may be able to get away with two or three different blades for example if you mostly work with 3/4 inch thick boards as a lot of weekend woodworkers do then a 3/8 inch wide 3 tooth and flex back carbon steel blade may be the most useful to you if you properly install in tension it you can cut pretty straight with a 3/8 inch blade you can even do some wrestling with it and it's just narrow enough for the most common curves you're likely to cut of course occasionally you will need to cut tighter curves than you can with a 3/8 inch wide blade and so I also like to have a quarter inch wide four tooth per inch flex back carbon steel blade on hand notice I said four teeth per inch on this one where the three-eighths inch blade was three teeth per inch that's because there will come times when you're working with stock thinner than a half an inch thick and in that case you'll get a cleaner cut with that extra tooth per inch so you can grab your quarter inch blade even if you're not making a tight curve put that in and use it for that thinner material so you get more versatility with just two blades the three toothbrush three-eighths inch blade and the four tooth per inch quarter inch blade now if you also build a lot of furniture then you're probably going to make a lot of straight cuts for joinery like Tenon's and you may be resawing thicker materials so in that case even though you could do that with your three-eighths inch blade if you do a lot of it you might want a half inch or wider three toothbrush hardback blade for those cuts that hardback is going to make it a little easier to avoid drift in your cuts and to the 1/2 inch is going to be a little bit better for the straight cuts if you cut something with a lot of very tight curves like bandsaw boxes then you might want to look into a 3/16 or a 1/8 inch blade but regardless if you just examine your habits you don't have to buy a different blade for every radius you're gonna cut you may be able to get by with just two three four at the most and with the tips in this video you should have no problem finding the right ones for your style of work if you're looking for a place to buy your blades I suggest sawblade calm they'll have any size you need they just make them up for you and their blades are of excellent quality and the prices are among the lowest anywhere plus by supporting them you support us and all the free content we produce so thanks in advance for that for more tips tricks and tutorials designed to make you a better woodworker be sure to check out the latest issue of stumpy Dubbs woodworking journal you could read and subscribe for free at stumpy tubs calm happy band song

Channel: Stumpy Nubs

Views: 177,173

Keywords: woodworking, stumpy nubs

Id: z7n7Gg4QOkc

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Tue May 22 2018