design hack

I don't know if it's because of the bitterly cold weather we've been having (see previous post), but my bandsaw blades keep breaking.  Rather than throw them out, I decided to recycle broken blades into wood rasps. I initially wanted to fix cut lenghths together with nuts and bolts, but the tempered blades whilst easy to saw, proved impossible to drill through.  Instead I taped all the pieces together and cut a 'V' in each end (with a dremel and grinding wheel) to then hold in a frame.

I also positioned the teeth in opposite directions so I cut material when working the rasp in both directions.  The blades are spaced apart because the teeth of the blades are angled, so with coarse toothed blades, this gives a better cut, but with fine toothed blades this isn't necessary as my second experiment proved.  I am very pleased with the results, they work as well as my current wood working rasp and save me throwing the blades away.

As fine toothed blades don't need to be spaced apart, the ends can just as easily be wrapped in strong tape and then covered with filler or Sugru to make them comfortable to hold.