your uses for old band saw blade material

[gwinn]

Guys:

I recently had to trash a 64 x 1/2 inch saw blade and also a blade for the benchtop wood saw. I hate to throw the material away if there is some decent use for it. Too thin to anneal-and-harden into a scraper or knife blade. Any thoughts?

Gwinn

[pcarpenter]

One tip from one of the Machinsit's Bedside Reader books was that you may be able to melt blade material and just weld it directly to the end of pieces of steel to get HSS tipped stuff from which to grind tools. In effect, you use it as welding rod with an oxy-acetylene torch. The reference was to hacksaw blades and made the point that it only works with HSS blades and *not* the bi-metal blades which are a hard tooth section welded to a softer back.

I don't know where your bandsaw blade stock falls in the hardness scale in order to know if this is applicable or not. The premise was that the HSS stuff would melt when used as a sort of welding rod and because of its metallurgy, remains hard in spite of being heated to the melting point.

Paul

[John Stevenson]

Can't think of a use for 1/2" wide blade but I've used 1" wide blade brazed to a disk to make special hole saws.
I have two here at 4" and 6" to take dust extraction pipes thru floorboards.

.

[Millman]

You have probably seen a bowsaw..use all your old bandsaw blades ,anneal the ends,drill small holes in each end for pins and that's how you recycle old bandsaw blades. Look up bowsaws, if you're not familiar with such a simple design just Google it on woodworking sites. Those saws last longer because there is not a SFPM limitation to worry about. You make the frame out of wood on your own property. Old days they were longer and called Panel saws.

[slink74659]

I've made deburr tools and scrapers out of them.

[TECHSHOP]

I never throw anything out.

You can laminate a few short pieces of the blade together and make a "rasp", mount it in a wood handle for nice, or duct tape the ends for "get-r-done." Loop them like a currycomb and scrap paint.

I made hole saws, but just used a circle groove in a board to "loop" the blade, blades for different types of frame saws, and small knife blades (X-acto like).

Grind the teeth off and use a short piece as a spring, capture the ends, bow the middle (like leaf springs). Grind the teeth off, fix to wooden shelf face, paint, and then you have "magnetic wood". Grind the teeth off, and use it as "shim stock".

[x39]

I like using left over short pieces of .035" bi-metal coil stock to make hack saw blades. Blades made with 14 tpi stock are agressive as hell, you can even cut wood reasonably well with them, and they last a long time.

[darryl]

What's wrong with re-soldering them for re-use in the bandsaw? Are they worn out, or full of cracks- I have used them for hacksaw blades as well, but by the time I can't re-use them on the bandsaw, they're pretty much toast. This is for two reasons, one the teeth are worn past the point where it cuts decently, and two, there are multiple cracks forming in the blade and it will break again shortly when used. Either way, chuck 'em out. The wider ones, and especially the hss blades, are useful as scrapers, form tools, deburring tools, etc. I've even had some success using pieces for cutoff tools, as long as I don't have to go very deep. The wider blade is also thicker, so it has more strength to it to start with, and can be successfully used in these other applications.
I don't like to toss things either, but those 1/2 in blades I can't find much use for.

[jimmstruk]

I have used a 1 inch blade ground to make a snap ring groove cutter. Was high speed steel, worked great. I realize it was a power hacksaw blade not bandsaw, but recycled some scrap to good use. Odd size holesaw seems like a good tip. JIM

[CCWKen]

I made a paper despensing rack (auto painting) and used sections of a band saw blade as the cutters.