giant Cypress: Japanese woodworking tool punk • Maebiki, by Lenox

Maebiki, by Lenox

I’m due for a new bandsaw blade, and I’ve been looking at trying out a bimetal bandsaw blade to get a longer lasting blade. These blades are typically made by laminating a piece of high speed steel to a carbon steel backing to form the teeth of the blade. I was marveling at this modern application of welding technology, and then I saw something on my maebiki that I hadn’t really noted before.

In these photos, you can clearly see a lamination line between the teeth and the main body of the maebiki. I took a small file to test the metal making up the tooth line and the metal making up the body of the saw, and they are clearly different types of steel, with the body being considerably softer than the tooth line.

This makes sense to me. Most Japanese saws are made from a single piece of hard steel, hammered out into the shape needed to make a ryoba, katana, or dozuki. If this same principle was applied to a maebiki, it would be a huge waste of steel, and would probably make the saw too brittle to use, given its size and thickness.

Now if I find a Japanese saw with carbide cutters welded to the tips of the teeth, I’ll be really impressed.

By the way, if anyone has recommendations on bandsaw blades that I should consider, please feel free to leave a comment. I like what I’ve read about the Lenox Diemaster 2, but I wish it came in a 1/2” x 0.025” 3 tpi configuration. The Lenox Tri-Master does have this configuration, but is quite a bit pricier.