a question i get from a lot of viewers is if carbide bandsaw blades are worth the investment carbide tip saw blades are expensive there is no way around that how expensive well i have a 15 inch bandsaw with a 14 inch resaw capacity so it takes a long 132 inch blade this is a one inch wide laguna resaw king blade i have used this brand for quite a while they are not a sponsor i buy them myself they're also not the only brand that makes carbide blades they're just what i use this blade cost me now get ready for this 175 bucks of course you probably don't have a saw that uses a blade that big but the price for my little bit smaller rikon saw which took a three-quarter inch wide 111 inch long blade was still around 170. so for the sake of price comparison i don't think it would be fair to compare them to the cheap general purpose high speed steel blades that you get because the cut quality just won't be the same the best high speed steel comparison that i could think of may be the wood slicer which is regarded to be of excellent quality a high speed steel wood slicer blade of the same size would cost you about fifty dollars so that means that the carbide blade is about three and a half times as expensive as a high speed steel blade do they last three and a half times as long yes much longer in fact but there is more to this subject than the blade's overall lifespan so stick with me for a couple minutes since i don't sell blades this may be the most unbiased video on the subject you're going to hear i've used these blades quite a bit but i've never actually dulled one to the point where it needed to be resharpened the first carbide blade that i bought was for my older saw i used it for a year or so and it was still cutting like new when i replaced the saw the new saw took a larger blade so i had to buy another one that blade was used for another year or so on a number of sizeable resaw projects with some really hard wood before the blade broke i'll come back to that later so i had to get a third blade that's what's on my saw now and it too has been used a fair amount and it's still cuts like new there was actually a fourth blade in there too which ended up being the wrong size and i procrastinated for a couple of months and then it was too late to return it so i've bought four blades i've done a ton of resawing and i've never dulled one of course my situation was unique you won't need four of these in your lifetime my point is that i'm not only someone who has a lot of experience using carbide blades but i'm also experienced in shelling out piles of cash for them so i know how much the investment can hurt and when i say i think they're worth the price you know i must mean it the reason comes down to two factors overall life span and what i call the performance curve how long they last obviously depends on how much you use them if you only resaw one or two boards a year your grandkids will be using the same blade unless in the future they switch to lasers but frankly if that's all the resong you do you may as well just stick with your high speed steel i don't think in that case this investment is worth it but if you're more like me and you do a few projects a year which require a moderate amount of resawing through some hard woods you should get at least a couple years before you start to notice the carbide beginning to dull then you send them into the factory for a 45 resharpening and you get another couple years of service or so they can resharpen four or five times plus the original time so that's four or five to six uses so i think you can reasonably expect a decade or more out of one of these blades that's a long life span but the most important factor to me is the performance curve on a well-tuned bandsaw a good high quality high speed steel resaw blade should cut as well as the carbide blade but as any blade begins to dull the quality begins to drop off you get a little rougher surface as the blade struggles to keep up that means you can't just sand you need to run it through the planer afterwards as it continues to dull it starts to drift more you can't just use your fence and push it along it you have to steer the board through the cut so you stay near your line now your surface is so rough you have to go and re-joint the face between each slice and more and more wood is becoming waste when your blade was sharp you could slice a three-quarter inch blade into equal pieces of nearly 3 8 of an inch giving give or take your 30 second for your kerf but as the blade dulls you have to do more steering now you're lucky to get a couple quarter inch slices out of your three quarter inch board that can make a big difference in your project let alone if you need thinner slices for veneers how do you cut a sixteenth or an eighth inch veneer if your blade wanders plus or minus the sixteenth of an inch if i'm working with very hard woods such as oak or hickory i start to notice a drop off with a high speed steel blade sometimes after two or three big slices before long that resaw blade isn't good for re-sawing anymore because it won't track straight enough and i'm just wasting too much wood but while a high-speed steel blade fades the carbide keeps performing because it dulls at a much slower rate i call that the performance curve and it can be pretty dramatic depending on the material you're cutting that's why you pay three and a half times as much for these carbide tips it's not for the convenience of replacing your blade less often it's because the blade will do its job at a higher level rather than fading like the high speed steel blade will by the way i did say i broke one of these blades it was actually someone else in the shop who did it so i don't know the exact circumstances but bandsaw blades break i've broken plenty of high speed steel blades over the years especially wide ones which are stiffer and they stress more it happens however laguna offers a re-welding service for 20 bucks so it's not a big deal i just have to get around to sending it into them again laguna's not a sponsor i buy my own blades but i will never go back to high-speed steel for re-sawing in my opinion if you do a fair amount of this kind of work the carbide blade is worth every cent in fact over time it is actually a lot cheaper than the good high-speed steel ones i'll put a link to them below this video if you want to check them out before i go i should mention because i know people are going to ask in the comments are these blades for regular curve cutting the answer is no they only make them i think a half inch is the narrowest you can get them so they're just for resawing not for curve cutting see you next time i've been using dura grit carbide sanding products for years and i still haven't worn out the first ones i bought if i have a rough edge to smooth a corner to chamfer or curve to shape more often than not i'm reaching for one of these cleverly designed tools it's one of those workshop s
