Shopsmith Forums

Greetings all. Have some desert ironwood along with a lot of river birch.
Need to cut up. Understand a carbide tip bandsaw blade is required.

Tried looking up Lenox carbide bandsaw blades without any luck. The Lenox website has at least half a dozen different types of carbide blades. Didn't see any 72 1/2" blades.

Anyone know a source & what size blade is the best?

Thanks,

Tony

backhertz wrote:Greetings all. Have some desert ironwood along with a lot of river birch.
Need to cut up. Understand a carbide tip bandsaw blade is required.

Tried looking up Lenox carbide bandsaw blades without any luck. The Lenox website has at least half a dozen different types of carbide blades. Didn't see any 72 1/2" blades.

Anyone know a source & what size blade is the best?

Thanks,

Tony

Timberwolf blades. https://timberwolfblades.com/

They will make anything you need and they know Shopsmith. It is cheaper to buy direct from them than anywhere else I have looked.

Don't know which blade is best for your purpose. However, this place sells Lennox blades to size, and the price is very good. https://www.bandsawbladesdirect.com/

Here’s a thread from several years ago where this was discussed.

https://www.shopsmith.com/ss_forum/view ... 18&t=15306

Per the Lenox “Guide to Bandsawing”, it looks like the Lenox Tri-Master is the best blade for the job. I cut & pasted a couple of impressive user reviews in that same thread. At the time, Highland Woodworking sold them in Shopsmith size for $103, but they no longer carry them.

https://www.lenoxtools.com/Guides/LENOX ... Sawing.pdf

As Dansmith said, you can buy them from BandSawBladesDirect.com, in whatever width and length you want. A 1/2” x 72-1/2” Tri-Master blade is priced at about $119. You can Google “Lenox Tri-Master” for more vendors and user reviews.

https://www.bandsawbladesdirect.com/len ... saw-blades

I’ve been wanting to get one for myself, but I just haven’t had any projects that would justify the price tag.

Why is a carbide blade required? I have cut those before with regular blades.

I have never purchased one of the carbide blades but have used a resaw bandsaw that had one on it. The carbide means it just stays sharper longer. The cost is about 3-4 times that of a conventional blade but they tend to stay sharper for much longer than that. If you are going to resaw a large amount of wood they probably are worth the cost. If the amount of wood is fairly small then just buying a new conventional blade for that job is probably more cost effective. One other consideration if you are resawing very expensive wood for veneer purposes is the kerf on the carbide blades are much wider so you will get less end product.
Paul