Benefits of Using Small Blades on Band Saw Projects

You know, I think for most of us when we think about band saws, we tend to think about, putting big massive blades on there doing re-sawing and those kinds of operations and of course, band saws are wonderful for that. But I want you to remember, they're also very good at doing more delicate work with a smaller scale blade like I'm using here. This is a three sixteenths inch blade and I'm using it to make a band saw box. What a great use of this beautiful chunk of spalted wood I've got here. So let me take you through the process.

Here's a rough outline of what I'm gonna do, I've got the outside shape pretty well-defined. I'm gonna do one more cut across the front. Then I got to cut the back off the box, cut the drawer out of the inside, do some cuts on the drawer and then we'll have a look at what the band saw box would look like going back together. It's a very way to take advantage of the band saws capability to handle these smaller blades. Well, let's have a look at how this is all gonna go back together.

There's my drawer and my drawer front. So after some sanding, I'll glue that back on the front and we'll glue the back back onto the back. So that's what creates the shape of my drawer box. Then with the body of this box, the back will get glued back on there after we close that little curve that we have from the band saw blade. And then of course, once that work is done our drawer's gonna scoot right inside.

So band saw boxes, man that's pretty, are a great way to take advantage of the saws capability of handling these smaller blades like this three sixteenths I've got on there now. I'm gonna swap blades and show you some other stuff you can do with smaller blades here on your saw. I've swapped blades on the band saw. Now I've got an eighth inch blade in there. So before I talk anymore, let's just have a look at this blades capabilities.

Working on a piece of red oak. Very tight turns, nice cut quality. Now the cut quality is also a function of the number of teeth we have per inch. So this is an eighth inch blade with 14 teeth per inch. It really did a great job of swinging through those tight radii, I was working through.

The other thing these blades are really handy for us, cutting non-ferrous metal. I've got a piece of aluminum here. Now watch how readily this blade will go through the aluminum. So the thing that's really key there is non-ferrous metal, so that qualifies aluminum, brass, copper for this. It's also really important we have that fine tooth count.

If we had the more aggressive teeth here, like we had on the three sixteenths blade that was in here earlier, it would not do a good job on the thin walled aluminum that we're cutting cause the teeth just have a tendency to kind of catch. We wanna stick with that fine tooth count when we're cutting these really thin metals like this. So remember the next time you're thinking about what your band saws capabilities are, don't forget about the smaller blades like eighth inch and three sixteenths, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities, including the band saw box like I showed you. The ability to cut these non-ferrous metals with a fine tooth smaller blade. And also just tight, tight, tight radius's that we can cut into the woodworking projects that you're working on.

All thanks to small blades and the band saw.