Does particle board dull bandsaw blades?

[John K Jordan]

Question is, will particle board do more damage to carbon steel band saw blades than typical hard/softwoods due to the glue content? I seem to go through band saw blades fairly frequently (or so I think, maybe its just the nature of these blades?).
... Curious what everyone else does.

All wood dulls bandsaw blades, some more than others, particle board can be harsh. I also resharpen my bandsaw blades. I had sharpened my last 3tpi blade four times before I replaced it. I grind only the part of the tooth that faces me (some call that side the back; I call it the front). I use a small metal-cutting disk on a Dremel, handheld with the blade on the saw, calibrated by eyeball, grind takes less than a second per tooth.

bandsaw_sharpen.jpg

One thing about this method - the cut can become less smooth with every sharpening since it can reduce the set on the teeth and since ground by hand the set on some may vary. This doesn't affect most of what use my bandsaw for - preparing turning blanks.

JKJ

[Randall J Cox]

Sparks off a band saw blade, I have seen them. Scary as I have my dust collection pulling the sawdust off both my bandsaws. i thought maybe it was my lower ceramic guides.... Maybe not. Randy

[Randall Houghton]

Jack

For radius work in particle board I'd use a jigsaw with a decent blade and clean up by using an edge sander of some flavor to sand to the line.

Regards Randy

[Mark Bolton]

I've cut MDF under low light conditions and I've seen sparks come off the blade. Perhaps some sand/dirt ??

I think if you cut anything under low light conditions you will likely see sparks but MDF is definitely hard on tooling. On the CNC we keep a few cutters used regularly on MDF dedicated to it. One sheet of MDF and it will never cut as clean on anything else but you can cut miles of MDF with the same tooling. Its a pain, but is what it is.