My meat saw blade snapped mid-cut last Tuesday and I'm still shaky about it
So last Tuesday I'm breaking down a big order for a restaurant client, 60 pounds of bone-in pork shoulder, and I'm maybe 20 minutes into it when the blade on my band saw just lets go with this awful bang. This saw has been in my shop for about 3 years and I do clean it every single night, but the blade itself was older than I want to admit, probably pushing 8 months of steady use. The whole thing whipped past my left hand by maybe 4 inches before the motor cut out, and I just stood there in my apron for a good minute with my heart going. What really eats at me is I told myself for weeks the cut was getting a little wobbly and the blade was tracking funny, and I kept saying I'd swap it on the slow day that never came. I called my old mentor Ray down in Fresno and he said the same thing happened to him in '09, and he lost the tip of his thumb to it, so I know I got lucky. New blade is on now and the first thing I did was write the install date in marker right on the housing so I can't kid myself again. How often are you all actually swapping blades on your saws, and do you go by hours, by the wobble, or just by the calendar?