I'm full of ideas - but the problem is that there is always someone that steals them from me long before I come up with them!
This may be the case here.
Kevin and his new LT15 got me thinking about a blade maintenance concept I was going to try but haven't gotten around to.
The concept is using a file or a stone to sharpen a band blade by hand. I had attended a Wood-Mizer training seminar where an Amish sawyer brought a blade he had sharpened using a round edged or tear shaped flat fine cut file. It worked.
Anyway, here is something that may be worth trying:
You put your new blade on and cut until you notice you're not cutting as fast as in the beginning. At the next convenient stopping point, turn up the wash and spin the blade to clean it. Then remove it for re-sharpening. The difference between a SHARP blade and one that will cut is probably less than 1/1000 of an inch on the very outside tip of the tooth.
Find a flat place like a 4x8 sheet of plywood on sawhorses or a flatbed truck and lay the blade on it.
Take the file and stoke the top of a tooth that is "set" pointing away. Then turn the file and stoke the face of the tooth - letting the round corner of the file touch the start of the radii of the gullet. Check to see if the very outside point of the tooth is sharp. (I can't see a sharp tooth any more so I check by feel. If I can LIGHTLY set base of my thumb on the tooth and it acts like a fishhook and grabs the skin, it's sharp. If I can stand to pull my hand and the tooth will slide without biting in, then it's not sharp.)
File all (one out of three) the teeth that point to the inside. Then turn the blade inside out and fill all the teeth on the other side. (This is so you would be pushing the file towards the point of the tooth.) The rake (center unset) tooth could be stroked from either side and I wonder if it would be even necessary to sharpen them - unless they've been damaged.
Turn the blade back right side out and put it back on the mill and see if you did any good. If you did, then you're well ahead of the game.
Continue to saw until the blade loses the SHARP edge again and re-sharpen it again. It may work a second time, maybe even a third, but eventually you will lose too much set and get uneven tooth height, hook angle off, short gullet depth and so on. Time to put the blade back into the box and send it in for re-sharp. This will put everything back in to spec.
If you can get another couple of sharpening from one that has been re-sharpened, then I'd guess it would be time to retire the blade - you've got you're money's worth.
What would really help would be to rig up a clamping fixture to hold the blade firmly while being filed. I'd think a clamp about 2' long made from a couple a chunks of bar stock or angle iron. Maybe weld on a pair of vice grips, bolts with wing nuts, toggle clamps, or whatever to clamp the blade between the holder. Also something to clamp the fixture onto the table would be in order.
Another tip would be to find the right file and keep it in good condition. Too many people, me included, end up tossing at file back into the toolbox or in a drawer with and against other files. Not good.
