Centaur Minimax S400P /MM16 bandsaw blade(s)

[Vjeko Balas]

I see there's both sales representation here for Centaur
as well as people with considerable bandsaw experience
and usage of bandsaw in question, so here's a general
question from a newbie to avoid unnecessary waste of time
and money: could someone please recommend one or two
bandsaw blades which would cover my needs best:
- bandsaw mainly used for cutting hardwood
(have scrollsaw for tight curves etc.)
- 2cm - 10cm dried hardwood straight cuts and slight curves
(furniture legs/pieces)
- up to 20cm not fully dried hardwood for carving blanks

On the saw itself, I see the following info about bandsaw length:
min 3835mm, max 3910mm. Does one aim a bit above the
minimum in case of made to measure ?

I saw the rule of thumb for bandsaw thickness: diameter of wheel/1100 mm
(400/1100 = .363mm) - is this the max thickness of blade to aim for
as I haven't seen many blades that thin ?

[Charles P. Wright]

I use a 1" Woodmaster CT for general work on my MM16, based on a recommendation from Sam Blasco. It works well for cutting rough lumber down to fit the jointer and also resawing it.

[David Eisenhauer]

I just recently broke an inexpensive 1" (approx. 25 mm) wide "Flexback" (Lennox brand I believe, carbon steel) 3 TPI Hook configuration blade that I have used for general cutting and breaking down of larger, rougher stock on my MM16 (the MM16 with the larger motor) for several years. I did not use that blade for thin, fine surface veneer ripping or tighter curve work, but did for everything else. I will replace that blade with the same thing soon. A 1/2" wide blade of the same type works well for gentle curve cutting on legs, stretchers, etc. The carbide blades are reported to work very, very well and last a long time, but they are more expensive. For my uses, the less expensive carbon blades work well. My saw uses 149" blades (sorry, too much math to convert for me!).

[Jim Becker]

Vjeko, while folks can easily recommend types/configurations of blades, knowing where you are in the world is going to impact anything specific to brands if that's what you want/need. Given your reference to metric measurements, I suspect you're not in the US.

I use a 1/2" (1.27cm) 3TPI blade most of the time on my MM16 (older version). As to length, the machine has some minor flexibility with that...a few mm in either direction should be easily accommodated by the tension adjustment range.

[Van Huskey]

First, forget that rule of thumb, you won't find blades that thin and you don't need them you just have to use blades that are not "hard backed" but rather have a flexible backer. Most blades people will use on a MM16 are going to be within .025 and .035 inches. (I'll let you do the conversion since I did coming from metric to imperial).

Based on blade length you have a later MM16 and the recommended blade length is 154", roughly the max listed on your saw.

Since you want specific recommendations instead of generic ones where are you located and if outside of North America what brands of bandsaw blades do you have access to?