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I spent a year in Rochester and figured I'd never find wings as good as upstate. Of all places, here in Portland OR the wings at Fire on the Mountain are as good as the real thing, and our beer beats the Genesee swill anytime...
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

Eating Crow here in New England. It's a good thing I'm also a Bills fan, otherwise it would have been hard to take the loss. But the Bills played better than the Patriots, especially on the Defensive side. Brady looked sub-par today due to the Bills' D.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Dude,

All, ALL and me do mean ALL yankie beer is swill.

Especially after chugging a Padma Special.


thus spake Padma,
blessings.

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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This story still reads to me like it's a design thing.... If this was a post talking about Carbide cutting tools on a Machinists board - the discussion would be very short... Either poor quality carbide, Wrong carbide grade chosen for the job, or incorrectly sharpened...

Since it's fancy pants name brand carbide and a company that sells Carbide stuff.... Assume we can cross off wrong carbide grade chosen and poor quality carbide - and all we are left with is incorrectly sharpened.... It could easily be improper sharpening technique that makes the carbide tips extra brittle... Pick the wrong sort of grinder and it yanks the carbide particles out of their matrix rather than fracturing the particles in the matrix.... leaving you with a "Fine" sharp looking edge that dulls *REALLY* fast... Pick the wrong cutting angles - and those fine, brittle edges fracture too easily - leaving a very dull blade...

For example - if the "New" carbide teeth feel sticky sharp like you would expect on a Carbon steel blade - it's likely sharpened wrong....

When I read the words "Self feeding problems" - I immediately think "Wrong cutting angles".. When I read "Cuts Spruce and Maple like butter but dulls fast in Ebony" - I immediately think "Wrong cutting angles"... When I read "You gotta set it up exactly perfectly for it to work right" - I immediately think "Wrong cutting angles"...... It's exactly the same story on Carbide machine tools... Grind them for big chips on soft materials in low power machines and they cut like mad - but they are super sensitive to chatter, interrupted cuts, hard materials, and poor setup....

This all takes me back to my first suspicion.... The room for expansion in the carbide bands market is selling to folks with smaller saws.... Saws that 5 years ago were too small or not stiff enough to take a "Real" carbide blade.... so How do you sell to those guys? Diddle around with cutting tooth angles to make it require *WAY* less power and tension... but they stick with a more conventional "Professional Mill" tooth design on bigger bands.... It's likely why they work so well on Lance's huge saw and so poorly on Todd and Fillipo's smaller saws.....

I think if I had one of these that was dull.. and I wanted to see if I could even salvage the band - I would just send it out to a pro saw sharpening shop that deals with big saws and have them re-cut the teeth to a "Hard, Abrasive woods" tooth profile.... I bet it would take a whole lot more power and tension - but it would cut Ebony....

Thanks

The 10 degree hook angle works best for me. That is what you see on portable band mills, for the most part. I first saw the steep hook angle on the Hitachi 3" blades, which were designed for the severely underpowered CB75. Those had a 20 degree hook angle, and the blade life with stellite teeth was not that much better than my $10 steel blades.

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John

Just want to contribute some personal experience.

I have a 1" RK that I just tried on my saw - 36" Yates American 1945ish vintage with Carter Guides on top & Wright guides on bottom.

I couldn't get it to cut straight even with Mahogany. Besides possible teeth issues, I think the super thin blade stock makes guide setup critical because the blade has very little torsional strength & wants to twist. Perhaps if I spent more than 20 minutes tweaking my old fashioned guides, I could have got it to work better. It also took a lot of feed pressure & the cut wasn't that smooth. Perhaps this can be the ultimate thin kerf resaw blade but the Woodmaster is a lot easier to set up on my saw at least.

Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.