Bandsaw blade issues with 16-inch bandsaw wheels question

[Huxleywood]

Touch wood, I haven't hit any stones. Must be interesting keeping that many bandsaws cutting, how many people do you have cutting for you? I can see why you would want stay away from carbide. When cutting for veneer which isn't often I go for between a 1/16" and an 1/8" but usually buy it. As far as price, its good to see at least one thing we Canadians don't get hosed on coming from the US. We really get hosed by Festool. LOL

John

I am primarily a hobby shop but I do take in some bandsaw work for local studio furniture makers who don't have the equipment or time to do some work efficiently.  The reclaimed wood furniture craze has found me resawing a lot of nasty stuff lately and I just did the rough cutting for 20 sculpted rockers for a hipster that sees himself as the second coming of Sam Maloof but doesn't own a bandsaw????  I might be what one would call a bandsaw collector (my wife would say a hoarder).  I have just had a life long fascination with them which has spurred me to play with them a lot and try to find the limits of what is possible.  I find many treat them as a secondary machine in the shop and often never get even 50% of the use out of that they could. 

As for the price of blades I am sure there are better sources in the US, I just haven't found them.  While e have a lot of metal cutting locally there isn't much wood cutting so industrial supply houses don't carry much woodcutting blade stock so it is priced high.  They don't cut much hard alloy metals here either so crossover blades like the Trimaster are non-existent.  I have gotten leads on shops that sell at excellent prices but they aren't set up for mail order and the ones that will charge a premium for the shipping and handling.  Be glad you have a good local source for higher end blades. 

Also, understand I would probably use my carbide blades much more if I only had 1 or 2 saws but the only way I can do the mental gymnastics to justify owning all the saws I do is to use different blade/saw combinations for different work...