no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
Thanks you gents for your swift replies , I won't go down that avenue at all . I know that shop bought ones are done on a special welder that anneals them afterwards . Thanks again for you interest.
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Nobody has complained yet about artistic uses of bandsaw blades. See http://www.artinsteel.co.uk/ for some really cool ideas (that guy uses circular saws, but I'm sure there is scope for development).
I would guess MIG wouldn't be very good - the band saw blades are made of fancy materials and heat treated, so welding would most likely weaken the material (is it done by the manufacturers before heat treatment?).
Guess it depends what you want to use them for. If it's decorative (art) then I'd guess MIG would work. For use in a band saw it feels dangerous.
I tried welding a 2cm wide blade today
I have a reasonably large 350 amp Miller Migmatic 383 running 1mm dia wire with 75% argon/25% C02 mix (mixed manually from separate bottles)
It took me 3 attempts to get a workable blade . I cut the blade ends at 45 degrees and used the spot weld setting on my mig welder and managed to join the 2 ends without burning the edges of the blade away and then carefully ground off any excess weld with a bench grinder for the outside of the blade and an angle grinder for the inside
The weld was strong and the blade seemed ok so I decided to give it a try on the 7.5kW vertical bandsaw I just got (I paid $200 for it and we have just rebuilt it hence no blades so I bought a 30 metre roll)
I started off cutting teflon - no problem , I cut about 10 blocks so feeling a bit more brave I tried it on some 50mm wide rectangular tube. I got through about 4 sectional cuts before the blade jammed slightly and a big TWANG and the blade let go
I can't find blades the right length for the saw off the shelf (like so many things here - I really miss a well stocked western style hardware or engineering supply store) so I usually try and improvise with the tools I have as you can spend days trying to find tools or shops that can do a competent job
So it can be done and if you had to do it to finish a job in an emergency it would be worth the 45 mins it took me to weld up and clean the blade for 15 mins use but I have sent one of the workshop boys out to find someone to butt weld them properly - not recommended for daily use , you will drive yourself crazy
A TIG welder is on the shopping list so when I get that I'll have another crack at welding up a bandsaw blade