I ran into a guy that was relocating his sawmill, and scored 31 blades.

After talking to him later, I found out they are the Silver tipped "Woodmizer" blades.

Has anyone pattern welded with these? Figured I'd check before I forge weld some samples to find out if they are worth the time and effort. 

Jeremy 

With the caveat that I am not a knife person, my understanding is that the sawmill blades most often used for pattern-welding are made of 15N20 steel, whose high nickel content gives a strong contrast when paired with a low-alloy carbon steel.

However, the Wood-Mizer website says that their "SilverTip Carbon Steel" blades are the "[m]ost common and affordable carbon steel material". This contrasts with the "DoubleHard High-Alloy Steel" blades, which are made from a "[t]ough, non-chip high-alloy steel material with induction hardened teeth". I don't know if this latter version is 15N20 or not, but I think we can safely say that the former is probably not.

The blades in the photo look fairly small, since they are for a portable sawmill. Larger stationary bandsaw mills have blades that are at least 6" wide, and I've seen chunks of sawblade for sale at Quad-State that were about 12" wide, maybe more.

If you want to use these blades for patternwelding, you might want to try cleaning and etching a piece first, to see how shiny or dark it becomes under acid. Based on those results and given the size of these blades, I would suggest using these as part of a cannister damascus billet, filling up the rest of the cannister with either 15N20 powder (if the blades etch dull and you need a shiny element) or 1095 powder (if they etch shiny and you need a dull contrast).

Again, I'm not a blade guy, but I think that would give you a good starting point for further exploration.

 

I’d give them a call and see if they have the material spec sheet. 
I’ve found this to work in a number of different cases- even called a spice company to see if there was paprika in a blend. A few minutes on the horn can save a lot of guesswork.

I called Wood-Mizer.

They said the bandsaw blade info is proprietary,  but also said they would make good knives.

I got a little time to see how the portable bandsaw blades performed in a billet. I just used some 3/16" x 1"  mild steel with the blade stock.

Starting billet size vs. Forge welded as a test.

Well, it appears that it "is" a High Carbon steel, as it turned black, mild steel is the gray.

Looks like I scored good stuff on theses 31 bandsaw blades!!! Each blade is just over 12ft long = lots of 6" pieces to use.

We have some smaller blades at work that i cut up and stacked for the wife to learn to use the press. Haven't tried etching to see if it resists like 15n20, but it is a decent carbon content. It also welds to itself pretty good, so stacking 6 or so layers would give you a good core for a san mai with your mild steel.

I’m surprised it etched dark. All bandsaw blades that I have used to date etch bright. I’ll have to be more careful in the future!

Keep it fun,

David