Wild Blade Break

[Percy]

Careless sawyer ordering 5 beers

[Magicman]

Or three beers and two shots.   

[tnaz]

 :D :D :D

[Brucer]

With a faster feed rate that will not happen. ...

Careful ;D.

With blades moving at the speed they do (and being made of spring steel) almost anything can happen. I've seen dozens of examples on this forum over the years.

The most common break I've had is the blade snapping at one point inside the blade housing. Sometimes it's easy to get it out, sometimes it's a tangled mess.

One thing that's happened to me (quite a few times) is to have a crack start in 2 or 3 places. If the cracks are 6-12 inches apart, then a piece will often come flying out the chute. Usually it hits the fingers and drops to the ground. Once a 3" long piece turned 90 degrees, passed between two fingers, and kind of tumbled down the chute. I think if it had been longer it would have sliced through the chute.

The strangest one I've seen didn't actually break. My friend Jim asked me to sharpen a few blades for him and brought them over in the back of his pickup (he never folds them). Most of them were damaged in some way but the one that had me  had multiple cracks in it. As in, 38 cracks. All of them were in the middle portion of the blade. Not a single crack had started in the gullet or on the back of the blade -- just a bunch of isolated cracks in the middle. As soon as I flexed the blade it would break at a crack. Each crack as clearly caused by fatigue (which is nearly always the case when a blade breaks normally. I have absolutely no idea how so many cracks (or even one) could start away from the edge like that.

[Peter Drouin]

Brucer, I have a CBN sharpener and grind heavy. I find it removes cracks well . The 1¼x55x7 will last a long time. ;D

[goose63]

I don't know how many time's Ihave told people to stay away from that end two guy's that were helping me would be right there to grab the bucket when it was full I would stop the mill and tell them to get the hell away from there.

When MM put those pictures on here I made coppys of them now Ican show them why thay need to stay away from there

[Peter Drouin]

I caught one before it popped.


 

[Percy]

I caught one before it popped.


 

Is that blood on the blade???? Or are you cutting meat in your spare time??? :D :D

[Magicman]

I am stealing Peter's thunder, but I also use paint on the weld to quickly identify blade profiles.  Red for 7° & green for 4°.  10° blades get no paint.

[Peter Drouin]

Red Ink to mark the weld for sharpening. All the blades are the same profile.
Magicman you can have any of my thunder you can steal. ;D

[Chuck White]

I use a cheap nail polish to mark the weld when I set and sharpen my blades.

Just makes it easier to see.

[4x4American]

I use a sharpie to write on all my blades, never had a problem, and, if you don't heat up the blade too much you can sometimes make out the code you write on the blade if you forgot what it was.

[5quarter]

Chuck...I ain't askin where you get the cheap nail polish.  ;) ;D

[boscojmb]

I added plywood to the inside of my band wheel covers. The plywood stops broken bands dead in their tracks.




If you have enough room to add plywood; it will stop broken blades from getting tangled up in your band wheels, it will also keep you safe.

[Brucer]

Brucer, I have a CBN sharpener and grind heavy. I find it removes cracks well. ...

Interesting point. Now that I think of it, I haven't had any multiple breaks since I started sharpening my own blades.

[Peter Drouin]

With the CBN my blades last longer and are very sharp.

[Chuck White]

Chuck...I ain't askin where you get the cheap nail polish.  ;) ;D

Well, since you brought it up, I get it at the Dollar Tree store.   ;D

Works good and easy to see.