0.035 gauge bandsaw blade on 14" cast Powermatic?

[Tyler Keniston]

So its that time for me to get some new bandsaw blades. Research (the vortex) has me really thinking I should be buying a 3 tpi, 1/2 inch, bi-metal blade.

Problem is, bi-metal doesn't come in 3 tpi in .025 gauge (the gauge I most often see run on 14") but only .035. As far as I can tell anyhow.

So the question is, can an old Powermatic 140 (old cast daddy) do alright with the .035 or is the simple fact of having 14" wheels going to cause problems. I don't know much about what the different gauges mean in practical user and performance terms. I have a woodslicer, but want something that stays sharp longer...

If you have anything to say about the thinking I should go with a 3 tpi bi-metal, say away. I was hoping to go bi-metal due to threads on here stating that bi-metal stays sharp up to 10x longer than carbon and is by far the economical choice (over carbide and carbon). 3 tpi seems to be all the rage as too many teeth leads to clogging (some schools of thought say, which I believe for now at least).

(As a side note, can anyone explain why a blade labeled as 'skip' is supposedly missing every other tooth, yet if its labeled as 3 tpi skip it still has 3 tpi, not half the tpi as 'skipping' a tooth would imply? I don't get it.)

Thanks for any thoughts,

Tyler

[John TenEyck]

Olson makes a 1/2" 3 tpi x 0.025" bi-metal blade. It's called their MVP series. I bought them on-line directly from Olson, and they do last a lot, lot longer than a carbon steel blade. The blade cut great, but only after I resharpened it. Out of the box it just would not cut straight. After I sharpened it, I cut hundreds and hundreds of feet of shop cut veneer and resawed drawer sides before it broke - my fault. It doesn't cut near as smooth as a Woodslicer, but it cuts without binding and lasts a long, long time.

The Lennox Dimaster is a 0.035" thick blade. I've never used them, but I think others have had good success and durability with them. I was just about to order one this week actually. It will be harder to tension than the Olson MVP blade. I use an Iturra spring on my 14" Delta with riser block and the practical tension limit is about 12K psi on the 1/2" Olson blade. With the Lennox I'd be surprised if I could get 10K w/o over straining the saw. But I think it will still cut OK because the beam strength is higher on the thicker Lennox blade. On the negative side, the kerf is wider and it's likely to cut slower. Wow, I'm talking myself into another Olson MVP blade.

John

[Tyler Keniston]

Thanks for the thoughts.
I did give the MVP's a cursory look. They were a bit more expensive than the Lenox, and approaching half the price of a carbide 3 tpi lenox... I may consider the MVP, but I don't like the sounds of the 'out of box' performance you described. I've never sharpened blades myself, especially high speed steel. How do you go about that?

Additionally Olsen doesn't seem to carry the blade in the length my saw requires (99 inches). They do carry 99 3/4. Not sure if that extra 3/4 would matter much.

Do you have any experience with the Olsen All-Pro PGT blades? I assume those are comparable with the Lenox Flexback?

[Lee Schierer]

I have an .024 x 3/4 inch 3 TPI blade that I run on my 14" Delta with the stock tension spring. I received from someone who advertised their blades here on SMC. I wish I could remember. A few years ago, they had a new website and I helped them out by correcting some spelling and grammatical errors on their site. In return they sent me the 3/4" resaw blade. It does a great job. The wider width helps keep the blade on track so I get straighter cuts.

I also did a google search for .024 band saw blades and found several sources but I still don't recall where I got the blade I have.

[Tyler Keniston]

So the skip tooth pattern is still confusing to me. Would a 3 tpi skip tooth and a 3 tpi regular tooth blade be the exact same? The description of skip teeth patterns makes it seem as though every other tooth is missing or something, implying a 3 tpi blade would actually have less than 3 tpi. But this doesn't seem to be the case. So why is it called 'skip?' Why aren't they simply advertised as the tpi they are and leave it at that?

[Carroll Courtney]

I haven't experience it myself but if there's a BS that could handle a blade that thick then it would be the older solid,one piece PM such as the 140,141,143 since they also have the cast iron wheels.
What kinda makes sense to me is if it made sense to make it in that pattern then it would not be so hard to find. .035 maybe are more for the horz BS than the vert ones.All this is just IMO not from experience

[Tony Joyce]

This should help.

303159

For an explanation of tooth types try this. http://www.ellissaw.com/Band-Saw-Blades/8/tooth-types-sets

Tony

[Tyler Keniston]

from the link: (Skip) "Very similar to the hook tooth but characterized by a straight 90 degree tooth and a sharp angle at the junction of the tooth and gullet."

So it is this sharp angle at the junction that is key?

In the diagrams posted, the skip tooth blade has less teeth than the regular blade. But what makes that 'skip' versus simply a blade with fewer tpi. That's where I'm confused. Unless it has specifically to do with this 'sharp junction' description. Which lead me to believe that a skip tooth blade of the same tpi as a regular blade has smaller teeth, albeit the same amount as the regular blade.

[ian maybury]

Issues with the thicker band on a 14in saw must include that (a) they will require more spring to tension, and (b) will as a result of the fairly tight bend suffer more bending stress and hence be more likely to break prematurely through fatigue.

Perhaps somebody has experience to say the maximum advisable band thickness to run on 14in wheels if fatigue is to be avoided? Better still a table listing max band thickness/wheel diameter….

[Tyler Keniston]

Yes the bandsaw I have is the old 140, solid one piece.

Yeah I am not sure why the .025 gauge is hard to get in 3 tpi 1/2" configurations for bi-metal. From piecing together different sources of advice it seems like an ideal general purpose blade for a 14" bandsaw and similar, but perhaps not...?

[John TenEyck]

Yes the bandsaw I have is the old 140, solid one piece.

Yeah I am not sure why the .025 gauge is hard to get in 3 tpi 1/2" configurations for bi-metal. From piecing together different sources of advice it seems like an ideal general purpose blade for a 14" bandsaw and similar, but perhaps not...?

And that's exactly why I bought the Olson MVP blades. It's the only one I could find in bi-metal at 0.025" gage. I don't want to push you into buying one though because, as I said earlier, the thing just would not cut straight until I resharpened it. The 3/8" one I bought, however, cuts fine so maybe it was just one bad blade. Anyway, to sharpen it I used my chainsaw grinder. I set the angle to 6.5 deg and took off just a couple of thousandths on the gullet portion of the tooth tip.

I just looked at Olson's website. Wow, you're right; their prices are really high. I bought the 105" 1/2" x 3 tpi MVP blade for around $35 maybe 4 years ago. They are $50 now. I think I'll give the Lennox blades a try.

John

[Curt Harms]

Spectrum Supply offers a Lenox Tri Master 1/2" .025" thickness 3 T.P.I. it seems:

http://www.spectrumsupply.com/trimaster.aspx

You can order any length you want including fractions. A 99" Trimaster looks like it'd run $118.42. For whatever reason Spectrum Supply is the only place I've seen this blade offered. Trimasters are reputed to produce a clean cut and last a long time. At that price, they'd better.

[Mike Cutler]

Trimasters are reputed to produce a clean cut and last a long time. At that price, they'd better.

Curt
They do produce a very nice cut, and last a longtime. I installed a Lennox Tri-Master, 2/3 varipitch, on my Rikon 10-340, when I bought it new in Feb 2005. It's still on the saw and it still cuts very nicely. I use it about as much as a hobbiest would be expected too. ( The last few years I haven't been doing much resawing though) In a production environment it obviously would not last as long.

For the OP

.035 is a little "thick" for a 14" diameter wheel. You will probably run into micro fracture issues. If memory serves me properly, 16" diameter was about the smallest size wheel that a .035 was recommended to be used with. I run the .035 Tri-Master on my 18" bandsaw.