On 2013-04-22, Existential Angst wrote:

Ed was right on on the alloy thing. Ig, by now, you should be alloy-savvy,
no?
4140, even unhardened, is tough stuff.

4140, if unhardened, is extremely easy to cut on a band saw. Cuts as
fast as any other steel.

8620 is a lot harder to cut! It takes forever, in comparison.

When I make ships by the bucket, new problems and questions appear, I
had to redo the coolant nozzle so that the blade stays wetter, etc.

But here's what you are actually in a position to do, since you are counting
buckets of chips.
Buy a bunch of blades from different mfrs, keep a log of hours, materials,
etc, and post back with some quantitative results on blade performance/life
You should keep some kind of "standard" material for an occasional test cut
(under "standard saw settings"), to assess blade performance over time.
That would prove very useful for everyone cutting metal, and you could at
least start to pay down the debt of, oh, about 10 years worth of free
bidniss advice/technical consultations.

Yep, I agree.

i