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Review on Imachinist S62121418 62" Bi-Metal Band Saw Blades For Metal - 14/18TPI, 1/2" Wide, 0.025" Thick by Jesus Gallagher

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Nice product, but didn't work for me.

This seems like a well-made blade. The metal is sturdy and the teeth seemed quite sharp right out of the box. It was packaged with a guard on the blade too, which was a nice touch. Unfortunately, while sized correctly, I was not able to use it for very long on my band saw, for a couple of reasons.I have a Harbor Freight 9" band saw (HF p/n 60500). The manual states that it will work with 62 x 1/2" blades, but in practice, max blade depth is limited to 3/8" or less, because at 1/2" the saw teeth drag against the inside of the steel frame on the left side of the machine. This is really a failure of the machine design and not the blade, but if you have the same machine, consider this a warning.The other problem is that, like every other band saws in this size/class, the machine only has a single speed, and it runs the blade at around 2500 inches per minute, great for hardwood but usually far too fast for cutting any sort of metal. I had hoped that this blade might have taken the high speed into account in the design, but sadly, that's not the case. It appears instead that they simply took a saw blade design from a larger proper metal band saw and just shortened it to fit these smaller machines.Anyway, these two issues combine to produce an extremely short lifespan for the blade. I got about 5 minutes of cutting 1/8" steel out of it before it stopped cutting altogether.All in all, not a bad blade at all, but it didn't work for me.

Pros
  • Excellent we use it a lot and buy it every month
Cons
  • The blades are easily prone to bending and breaking