Bow saw blade quality

[Two Acres]

I use a 24" bow saw for cutting small diameter branches for the woodburner. The last blade I had was fantastic, it lasted a good year and is still useable Sadly I can't find any makers marks on it. Last week I bought a replacement Stanley blade, its rubbish:thumbdown: At the independent DIY shop yesterday I had a choice of Bahco blades at around £10, AW at about £3 and Faithfull at about £4. The Stanley was a fiver so I went for the Bahco, not tried it yet. I've used AW and they're ok for the money I'd say, better than the Stanley. What manufactuers blades do you all prefer or should I just buy a Silky?

[Dave NE]

I haven't bought a new blade in years, I use a cheap diamond needle file to sharpen ours when needed, its quite an easy job to follow the original grinding angles, cheers Dave

[TGB]

Last doz. I've used over the years, have all been different but sadly all the same. Hardened teeth with too little offset. So the chaff isn't well cleared and it's impossible to sharpen them.

[Stubby]

Bacho or Sandvik ....

[spandit]

I've always used Bahco but as mentioned, they're hardpoint blades and not designed to be sharpened. A friend of mine (former tree surgeon) had a big old blade that wasn't hardpoint (he kept it sharp) and it was like cutting through butter but that probably doesn't help you

[difflock]

Bacho or Sandvik ....

 

:thumbup:

 

New, akin to a Silky type saw in sharpness, as one of my knuckels too well knows:blushing:

 

oops

really REALLY want a 30" blade for a long lazy effortless cut, using every 1" of the available blade.

Less wasted reversing effort for any given amount of cutting.

[Macpherson]

I haven't bought a new blade in years, I use a cheap diamond needle file to sharpen ours when needed, its quite an easy job to follow the original grinding angles, cheers Dave

 

Yeah, Sandvik or Bacho for me too, and diamond files are great for touching up many tools that may normally be considered `throw away`, also diamond rotary burrs are really quite cheap now and get hardened things really sharp again easily. cheers

[rustcutter]

No reason not to sharpen hard point blades just use suitable stone/diamond file but don't forget especially a bowsaw which is used for pruning/tree work is that the set of the blade usually suffers no matter how careful you are. The bowsaw blade I use at the minute came from a skip was obviously quite new but set had been pinched out of it; two minutes with the setting pliers and it was like new again.

[Two Acres]

Thanks for the advice all I didn't realise you could sharpen hardened blades. I'll go get myself a diamond file and I won't be binning that really good blade I've just finished using.

 

What do you reckon to taking the crap Stanley blade back to the shop and asking for a refund? (not fit for purose IMHO). Its only a fiver but the manufactuer should really not be getting away with it. I've cut one branch with it, it was really slow, didn't want to bite and the blade too flexible. The blade really wanted to just jump off the wood rather than cut it

[scbk]

What to watch aswell is you get some blades designed for green wood and some for bone dry/dead wood, make sure you get the right one!