Carbide Tipped Bandsaw Blades Last Longer!

Premium Carbide Bandsaw Blades
Carbide Tipped Bandsaw Blades Last Longer

Carbide tipped bandsaw blades have cutting surfaces that are harder and provide a longer lasting cutting edge than you'll get with standard steel and carbon-steel based bandsaw blades. This makes carbide-tipped bandsaw blades a good choice when cutting wood that is especially hard and dense, or has abrasive properties, which are found in many exotic wood species. Because carbide tipped blades stay sharper longer than carbon based blades, they have a much longer usable service life than standard bandsaw blades.

A carbide tipped blade consists of small pieces of carbide tips brazed onto a backing band. The carbide is then accurately ground to a three sided shape know as a triple chip pattern. Carbide tipped blades usually have a low tooth-per-inch count (3 or 4 TPI) and are a useful choice for cutting thicker stock, handling tasks like ripping and resawing quite well. In addition, the hook style blade type has deep gullets between each carbide tooth, which affords plenty of space for the high volume of dust created, allowing it to be extracted from the cut efficiently. Most carbide tipped blades will be 1/2” or more in width and thus work best for straight line cutting or for cutting very slight curves.

While there is no single, do all, “perfect” blade choice for wood shop bandsaws, when edge cutting durability is a high priority, a carbide-tipped blade, despite its higher initial upfront cost compared to standard blades, can be a very worthwhile choice for woodworkers.

A comparison analogy for carbide having a long life is found with router bits. A new carbide router bit will not have edges as sharp as a new HSS router bit. Even though HSS is more heat tolerant than a carbide cutting edge, a HSS router bit cutting wood typically dulls way faster than a carbide bit. The slightly less sharp edge of carbide cuts much longer, since carbide is significantly harder than HSS. Fortunately, the carbide flutes of router bits rarely number more than 4, so manufacturing costs are kept reasonable. But due to the number of teeth on a bandsaw blade, putting carbide tips on each tooth adds significantly to the cost of the blade (compared to standard steel blades whose teeth are just cut and ground out of the band stock).

Sooner or later, depending on the type of wood being cut, pitch and resin builds up on bandsaw blades which causes friction making them cut less effectively. If the buildup isn’t removed, the ever increasing friction (and resulting heat) will began dulling the carbide tips, cutting short the life of the blade. For cleaning Bandsaw Blades we recommend CMT Blade & Bit Cleaner. CMT's cleaner requires no rinsing after it has done its job of loosening baked-on encrustations on your bandsaw blade - all you do is wipe the blade clean, leaving a thin film coating that protects against rust and corrosion.

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