Home use Food Band Saw

[Paul Bacino]

Curious if anyone has a home use band saw for cutting meat/bones, I would think 12" clearance and reasonable price. We had one at our store , many yrs ago but it was commercial. Thoughts?

I think Cabelas has something.

[xxchef]

I do a lot of seasonal butchering (steers, hogs, goat, poultry) here and have an 18-volt Milwaukee cordless reciprocating saw ("Sawzall") I use for this purpose. Blades are readily available up to 12" and in many teeth-per-inch (TPI) and thickness configurations at any hardware store and they are not prohibitively expensive. This set-up is also very fast easy to clean and keep sanitary.

[Paul Bacino]

XXchef..

I have thought about that too.. I do see some of the blades have a painted coat, that I use for home crafting. Are you choosing a particular blade ?

Paul

[xxchef]

Yeah, you're right about the paint on the blades but I've never worried about it. A quick look at a couple of the blades doesn't show much worn off after a couple animals worth of use. I usually use heavy-duty coarse metal-cutting blades in the 10-16 TPI range. More tpi will give a soother cut but go slower and tend to clog up. Coarser and there's more bone fragments on the meat to deal with and the muscle tissue can look a bit ragged.

I try to cut almost all the way through/around with my knife first for, say shanks or chops, then just cut through the bones with the saw. This gives me the best results.

I've also cut whole pork loins into chops end-to-end with the saw alone but it was par-frozen/"hard chilled" first. I used a coarser blade (6TPI maybe?) and it worked pretty good.

[PetersCreek]

Cabela's offers the Rocky Top Ripper blades for the exact purpose of turning your recip saw into a meat saw. Pretty cool.

[ScoopKW]

Has anyone slapped a meat-cutting blade on a wood-working band saw?

I don't see why that wouldn't work. But it would probably be hell to clean.

[qrn]

Ocasionally,I use my wood shop band saw on dry cured hams,never considered using it on real wet stuff...sounds real messy on the insides of the machine...

Bud

[Edward J]

The butchers use s/s blades, and butcher's band saws are usually s/s and/or aluminum. They are a bear to clean and sanitize, and are used mostly now to cut frozen meat.

I think a recip. saw would be very easy to clean, especially the blade, sounds like a better idea.

[runwestierun]

We use a Sawzall too because it's cordless and easy to take into the field.