Thread: Blade brazing advice 15% or 45% and what gauge stock for a little saw?

Hi Ben,
As far as the thickness of the blades, I can't help you sorry.
Any good saw blade shop, will/should sell you a coil of blade. NO matter what quality blades you use, you'll always have problems, it's not you, but the saw.
STAY AWAY from the 3 wheeled bandsaws, nothing but trouble. DAMHIKT. The blades don't like flexing over the small wheels. Modify it to take linishing belts, is about the best advise I could give you. I went to a blade supplier to find out how to fix the problem, and that's what I was advised.
To the best of my knowledge, 15% is an excellent flow and ductility, suitable for higher vibration applications, where as 45% is a Universal general purpose alloy for refrigeration and engineering. This might help you and others with this link. http://www.actrol.com.au/Global/Asse...nical-data.pdf
Kryn

Delete button disappeared again

Being a bandsaw novice and trying to buy blades for my Aldi Special, I found this site's information mimicked what I was being told by blade suppliers I contacted.
https://www.kmstools.com/blog/choosing-bandsaw-blades/
Cheers

Thank you Kyrn and Lappa!
I hovered over the Bandsaw forum and stumbled across lots of good info. The little 3 wheeler sounds like trouble to be honest. I'm getting straight breaks in that blade (far) away from the joins now. Looks like the 0.025 is too thick for the little 10" bandsaw.

The bandsaw was a loaner from a neighbour and I think I might look at building or buying a bigger unit. As I said before, it's a darn useful tool and should have jumped in years ago.

That article was a good find Lappa!

I will test out some 15% Kryn and let you know. My rods in the shop are yellow tip so I will google that first... I think yellow is only 5%.

I read an article a while back and it listed the most common blade lengths and will work around that.

Thank you both for the input!
Ben

From memory, 15% is too little silver to be really flexible, especially for a 3 wheel machine (which have really small wheels so need really thin blades to cope with the flex). I have a feeling that we use something like 30% (or it may be 45%) for the blades on our big mill (it will take a 900mm log 5+M long). It's stretching the memory banks but when I had a 3 wheel saw I had to use really thin blades and treat them with great care to get any life out of the blades. From experience...10" benchtop machines are OK for doll's houses and small boxes, 12" will get you by for a while but 14" and about 3HP will do almost anything the average bloke would want to do in his garage.

A big part of your issue is the blade thickness, the smaller the wheels are, the sharper the blade has to bend to go around the bend, and the thinner the blade needs to be to accommodate the bends without undue fatigue. This is compounded by the machine being a three wheeler, the wheels are way smaller than they would be for a 2 wheel 10inch saw. Many blade manufacturers (the ones that make decent rolls of stock, not the ones who cut and join) won't even recommend a blade for saws with wheels smaller than 10in dia due to issues with metal fatigue and cracking due to the continuous rotation around the small wheel.
You need the thinnest blade stock available, which unfortunately won't be very strong so will need relatively low tension and will be prone to flexing a lot to stuff up your cuts. Best option overall is to bite the bullet and get a decent rigid 14" or larger saw if you see a fair bit of bandsawing in your future.

I second what Malb said. 14" (and larger) saws have a good selection of blade stock materials available, from narrow blades for curves all the way to wide blades with big teeth for resaw work plus they come with motors with enough "grunt" to do resaw work. If I was doing a lot of resaw work I would go to 16", simply to be able to resaw thicker stock but in the real world (or a garage) 14" will do most things a mere mortal wants to do.
Good luck, whichever way you go.