Chris Luke never intended to design a pallet dismantler blade. His background as CEO of Sawblade.com was in the steel business. Luke was chasing a quieter, faster blade that wouldn’t strip its teeth when cutting steel. But a colleague suggested to him, “If you really want to torture-test a blade, run it in pallet dismantling. If it survives there, it’ll survive anywhere.”
That advice led Luke and his team into experimenting with different blade designs, and they eventually developed the QSAW 901 M42 bi-metal bandsaw blade. Over the last five years, this blade has proven its durability day-after-day with pallet recyclers.
To engineer the best blade, you have to really address why a blade fails. Many times, the real failure point isn’t the blade itself, according to Luke. It’s what happens before it’s unboxed and how an operator handles it. After testing competitive products with about 20 pallet recyclers, Sawblade.com found that all of the competitors’ blades are engineered fine. Most damage occurs when an operator tries to unbox and install a blade. During this process, sometimes the blade’s teeth accidentally hit the ground or other obstacles. Sawblade.com has developed a simple and inexpensive fix. Every blade is shipped with plastic tooth capping that is easy to remove without any tools. This protective covering is a little detail that makes a big difference according to Luke.
The engineering behind the QSAW 901 blade borrows straight from the company’s experience manufacturing blades for cutting structural steel. Luke explained, “We changed to a 6% chrome backing for the blade because the backing is the weakest part when you’re cutting wood pallets. That’s due to the stress the backing takes from the revolutions the blade makes around the wheels. If a customer sees stress cracks in the backing of their blades, that’s actually a good sign for the teeth. It means that the teeth were fine, and it was the backing material that failed.”
Key advantages of the QSAW 901 M42 bi-metal blade include an M42 cutting edge, precision-ground and set teeth, and a 6% chrome-packed backing, instead of the industry-standard D6A. Luke stated, “This backing alone cuts fatigue-related breakage by roughly half. A standard bandsaw blade might last a few days on a saw before the back fatigues and snaps. Our blades are built to run longer.”
The design philosophy is “forgiving,” not just focused on “precision.” Pallet dismantling tends to be very rough on tooling. The process includes interrupted cuts through embedded nails, inconsistent feed rates, operators pulling material through as fast as they can. Instead of asking recyclers to change how they work, Sawblade.com has re-engineered the tooth set and angle to absorb that abuse. The result is longer blade life. Luke said, “Our customers typically get roughly 20% longer blade life with about 70% of customers reporting strong performance.” But he candidly admitted, “Results can vary for the typical customer depending on the real-world scenario. Rougher operating conditions can still shorten blade life regardless of the blade.”
All of Sawblade.com’s products are custom welded to any length in the company’s Houston facility and backed with a guarantee. The company has been in the sawblade manufacturing industry for almost 40 years. Quality control is camera-monitored, not eyeballed. Luke noted, “We are a web-based company, so we have to get it right the first time. This means every blade’s tooth set is checked by vision systems on the production line; when a tooth falls out of tolerance, the line stops. Blades are milled and ground rather than stamped, and packaging includes cardboard dividers so that teeth don’t rattle against each other in transit.”
Sawblade.com offers just-in-time delivery because many pallet operations don’t reorder until a machine is almost out of blades. To meet last-minute orders, Sawblade.com pre-welds and stocks roughly 40,000 blades across the ten most common pallet sizes. These are packaged in “butterflied” 10-packs at a lower per-blade price than singles. A call before 3 p.m. typically ships the same day out of the company’s Houston facility.
Continuously focused on delivering and exceeding customer expectations, Sawblade.com emphasizes customer scoring to evaluate and improve the business. Luke noted, “Sawblade.com reports a 9.8 out of 10 net promoter score and customer satisfaction surveys averaging around 4.7–4.8 out of 5.”
Sawblade.com also supplies bandsaw blades for portable sawmills and is looking to add circular blades to its lineup through acquisitions sometime in the future. Why use the QSAW 901 blade from Sawblade.com? It comes down to a blade engineered for tough conditions, protected all the way to the saw, and stocked so you never run out and can order at your convenience. See the customer testimonial video. Give the QSAW 901 a try, call (800) 754-6920 or visit www.sawblade.com.
