Lots of discussion about bandsaws in the last few days. This is one about the horizontal metal bandsaws, not the vertical bandsaw.
The other day, @TyIsI, @Emerson and I replaced the blade on the green bandsaw with a bimetal blade (as the last one had snapped). @Emerson picked these up for ~$40 a pop from Summit Tools on VHS’s dime. Thanks for getting those!
However, this tale is not only one of praise, but also one of caution. In installing the blade, I grabbed scrap aluminum square stock from the box in the back for a test cut. It cut well most of the way through and then a terrible terrible sound was emitted from the machine. The blade appeared fine, but it could not cut through the rest of the aluminum.
We found, embedded inside the aluminum stock, a broken drill bit. Given that this drill bit is hardened steel, it destroyed the teeth on the blade almost instantly.
Fortunately, we have ANOTHER new blade (which was the backup) and installed that. However, it was a costly mistake.
Moral of this story:
Know what you are cutting. Make sure that the tools can handle it.
Don’t keep stock with potentially damaging materials embedded in it. This also goes for wood with embedded nails which will do terrible things to power tools.
Not exactly sure how a metal detector works, but my guess would be that it is detecting metals rather than ferromagnetic materials using a time-varying electric field. ie. oscillate a field, induce current in metal object, creates opposite magnetic field, detect back emf. Certainly useful for metal stuff in wood, but probably wouldn’t be useful for metal working (everything would be detected)
To detect steel in aluminum, we would probably just need a big magnet. Does it feel like it is pulling?
That’s really a shame, that being said, can the next person going to Summit Tools (not sure if that’s a regular spot for anyone) pick up another spare blade? We should probably always have at least an spare on-hand for these sorts of tools.
Wow - glad nothing shot out of there and sliced you up or anything. Thanks for the blow-by-blow. I hadn’t even thought of that…I mean, it’s an automatic for wood, but not so much for aluminum stock. Thanks for the reminder. And thanks @emerson - much appreciate on a new blade pickup.
