can someone quickly tell me what size blades are used for what guage
metal? thanks bari
Barry,
It’s not really that easy to answer your question. The size of
blade determines more the “roughness” of the cut and/or how much
metal you’re removing (in the form of fine shavings that become
"dust"), rather than being attached to a specific gauge of metal. So
I’ve used an aught/4 (0/4) or aught/6 blade (0/6) on 14, 16 or 18
gauge metals, when I want a very fine cut with a lot of detail work,
where I won’t be able to go back in with files to clean up much or at
all.
If you’re working in gold or platinum, you’re going to always want
to use the smallest possible blade for the job to miinimize your
waste from saw dust. With silver, that’s less critical because it’s
so inexpensive.
Having said that, my “workhorse” blades are 0/2 and 0/4, which I use
for just about everything. When sawing a mokume stack, in its early
stages of development I use a #4 because it’s so darned thick, and
decrease the blade size as the stack gets rolled down. But it’s so
dense that I rarely go below an 0/2 on mokume.
Best advice … buy an assortment heavily weighted toward the 0/2
and 0/4 sizes, and practice a lot to develop a nice light touch with
the blade to avoid breaking them frequently.
Enjoy! Karen Goeller @Karen_Goeller
can someone quickly tell me what size blades are used for what guage metal? thanks bari
The rule of thumb that I was taught was 3 teeth of the blade on the
thickness of the metal. Fewer teeth will catch and be more difficult
to control. You can sometimes get around this by tipping the sawframe
forward so that you are contacting more metal with the blade, but
this is only good for straight or near straight cuts.
John