Hacksaw blades

Ah, you need to buy bi-metal or HSS (High Speed Steel) blades. Sounds like you have got low carbon steel blades, which are flexible, but not hard.

You pays your money and takes your pick. Good blades are more expensive. Screwfix has something for everyone.

Use 24TPI for general work.

18TPI for sawing coarse stuff (cuts faster).

You can also get the best of both worlds with a version which has hard teeth, but a flexible blade.

I'd always go for bimetal - HSS snap far too easily. They're OK if you've got a nice solid workpiece in a vice, but anywhere where things might move a tad and the just go PING. Bimetal outlast HSS every time for me.

Starrett, Bahco, Eclipse. As Rumble said, bi metal are good, hard but flexible.

As an engineering apprentice it was demonstrated to me that you could bend a good quality blade into a full circle and it wouldn't break.

As far as the OP goes, a hacksaw is not the best tool to use for rusty bolts. I would have used an angle grinder.

Dave

I did. But that meant dragging one to the other.

S'what I ordered.

How do Screwfix know that I was thinking "Hmmm, haven't seen a Screwfix catalogue for a while" and put one in my post box?

^^^^^^^^ Ordered some of those. Bimetal ones.

Sandvik, bimetal ones for general use and a couple of all-hard for accuracy at the bench. It's worth having vearying tooth sizes too.

I used to swear by Eclipse bimetals, but they seem to have turned rubbish in recent years.

They'll do it again in two week's time. I'm thinking of employing a servant just to carry the Screwfix and Viking catalogues to the bin.

Damn.

The order just arrived and there *isn't* a catalogue in it! That should cut down the UK's land-fill by at least 25,000 tonnes a year. I always ended up with half-a-dozen of the damn things.

Unwanted CPC brochures seem to be my current bête noire.