I ask this question here hoping its the right place. I found out recently that meat as well as wood is put through a bandsaw to cut up carcasses, and instantly assumed that it was a straight edge blade like a knife unlike the saw tooth blades used to cut wood. I have since looked on Google and been unable to find such a bandsaw blade. So my question is if they don’t exist, why? And if they do where do I find information about them?
In: Engineering
They do use bandsaws with teeth. They are the same type that you get for cutting wood. A bandsaw with a straight edge like a knife would not be able to apply the same force that a knife does and will therefore not be able to cut through the meat. The reason knifes have a straight edge is so that the fibers of the meat does not get caught up and instead gets cut. This does mean that it is difficult to cut raw meat on a band saw. There are however a few ways around this issue. Firstly it is quite common to freeze the meat and then just cut the frozen meat on the bandsaw. Another technique is to cut through the meat with a knife all the way to the bone and then take it to the bandsaw to cut through the bone.
Knife-edge bandsaw blades do exist, but they’re relatively specific in their application.
Toothed blades are more common, especially in bandsaw applications because of their effectiveness on the materials they’re designed to cut, like all saws.
The teeth on a blade serve to cut and remove material from the object being cut, which allows the blade to move through the material quickly and easily. A razor edge relies on pressure and movement being exerted on the blade to cut through its material.
When you’re processing animal carcasses, you need the ability to cut through a mix of things ranging from soft tissue to hard bone without stopping. A toothed bandsaw blade will readily cut through all of them while a knife edge will only be effective on tissue.
A bandsaw blade does not cut like a knife, but rather like a saw. It is, after all, a saw. If you wanted to cut something like a knife, you’d use a hydraulic blade of some sort. If you were to put that kind of pressure on a bandsaw blade, it would get pushed out of the way a bit.
A long time ago I worked at a supermarket that had a butcher department. One if my jobs was cleaning the equipment at the end of the day and they had a bandsaw that was used for cutting up large sections of meat. Getting all the meat “sawdust” out if it so that it could be sterilized was a pain in the ass.
It was almost exactly like the one you might use for wood, but it was stainless steel like a lot of food service equipment. It used a normal toothed saw band.
Your best bet if you want specific information is probably to look up a website for a food service or butcher equipment retailer.
>instantly assumed that it was a straight edge blade like a knife unlike the saw tooth blades used to cut wood.
Why would you assume that? The reason you’re using a saw and not a knife is to go through bone. You need sawteeth for that.
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