Leo Van Der Loo wrote:

The standard blades are normally for sawing dry wood with a narrow
smooth kerf.
The blades we need for sawing wet wood do need a wide kerf for clearance
and it does not have to be a nice smooth cut.
The standard idea is to have a minimum of 3 teeth in the wood you saw,
so for furniture making where 1/2" and 3/4" wood is sawn regularly you
need 8 or more teeth per inch (tpi).
We saw thicker wood normally so a 3 or 4 tpi is best and if you have
more than one speed on your saw, you can safely go to the higher speed,
the more teeth going through the wood make for a faster sawing feed.
The size of the saw (measured from its back to tooth point, not from the
back to the gullet) is important only for the tightness of the curve you
want to make, for a tight curve you need a narrow blade and a wide blade
helps for making straight cuts.
Also now is a good time to get a book on bands use and tuning.

I've measured the standard saw blade that came with the saw, and it
appears to be a 3/8" 3tpi blade, so I'm OK there it seems.

Regarding the speed, it is a dual speed saw, a Record Power BS300, and
according to the manual ...

"The BS300 has two blade speeds 360 m/min (1190 feet/
min) for hardwoods, some plastics and certain non ferrous
metals and 780 m/min (2580 feet/min) for all other timber."

I figured that since most of the wood I would be cutting would qualify
as "hardwood" I'd use the slower setting, but are you saying I should be
using the higher setting?

--
Alun Saunders