huh, I hadn't seen those before, neat! I have a "Slice" boxcutter which is the same sort of ceramic blade, which works fantastic on boxes and plastic clamshells, so stands to reason that it'd cut the edging super cleanly. Do you use it on wood edging at all? I could see on some veneered boxes that working pretty well for cleanup

@@TheWoodKnight I haven't used it for solid timber or veneer edging. I've heard of square cut options also, but not seen them. Not sure who sells them in the eastern states, but Galvins Hardware (Not Plumbing) in W.A. sell them.

I went through almost a 100m roll, and I can confirm my arms wanted to fall off even with the edge bander! Thats probably more of a reflection on my spaghetti arms though 😁

Not going to lie, I thought this was somebody impersonating you to start off with - the change from image to photo of your logo is just slight enough that it tricked me 🤣 For personal stuff, yeah, it's a pricey expenditure until you look at the price of Kaboodle cabinets stuff. Even with buying tools (edge bander, new compressor for spray finish), I'm coming out ahead about $2000 from similar uppers/base cabinets. One client job and you'd have it for life!

@@TheWoodKnight as I literally reach for the melamine iron today I am questioning my life choices 😅 Yeah, first logo change since I started! Gone all real life imagery.

It's tricky - It's not cheap, I agree. And worse, this is the cheapest edge bander - the fancier ones that work with pallet glue/etc like Festools Conturo is a staggering $6000! However, looking at the cost of kit cabinets from Kaboodle or similar priced..well.. My workshop cabinets (5 lower w/ 20 drawers, 5 uppers, painted doors) comes in several *thousand* cheaper compared to a similar setup from Kaboodle (but ultimately fewer drawers), and thats including buying the edge bander, a new compressor (to paint the doors), and a few other tools! With the new house, there are no cupboards in the laundry, and surprisingly few in the kitchen, so the intention is to make a bunch for inside as well. I'll get my moneys worth, and the second hand market looks like the edge bander holds a reasonable amount of it's value. At least that's how I've been justifying it to myself, hhaha

I think if you went for the thinner stuff (thinner than 1mm), then you probably could get away with it. There are some DIY edge banding rigs using a regular heat gun on youtube that might be worth a go - I just didn't want a project inside a project inside a project, ya know? 😁 As for the Virutex edgebander, there wasn't a lot of price difference between the two and I figured with my noodle arms I'd get too tired holding that up. It would be *better* for portability if you were doing stuff on a jobsite, and it does curves/circles. The main downside would be you need to clamp each work piece so it'd take longer in the setup time.

Tooth count and tooth geometry are the answer! Ideal situation is a hi-ATB blade with 60-80 teeth on a 10" blade. Melamine/laminate blades are *generally* around 80tooth with hi-ATB profiles but can be very expensive. I think they also have less (sometimes negative?) rake. That being said, I don't have a melamine specific blade, I'm using my standard table saw blade which happens to be 40t Hi-ATB general purpose blade (Freud's Fusion P410). A combo blade will give a poor result - that "ripping" tooth will cause a lot of chipout. The two other ways I know of to get a clean with a regular blade are * do a scoring cut first. 1-2mm deep on one side, then raising the blade and cutting all the way through. Some people will do 3 cuts - a scoring cut on each side, then the through cut. * using masking tape along the cut line.