I use bi metal blades on my Roll In bandsaw,because I use 3/4" wide blades in it. It came used with a big bunch of the bi metal blades. But,my problem is I have scads of 1/4" and 1/2" carbon steel blade stock that I can use on my 4x6 saw,and on my contour cutting vertical saw. Plus,I have a blade welder for up to 1/2" blades.
If your small saws are breaking blades,I think you may not be doing the best job on welding. What I do is twist one end of the blade 180º over against the other end when grinding. Hold the ends of the blade overlapping when you grind,and make sure the blades are in perfect alignment while grinding. That way,when you grind the ends as square as possible,and let the flipped end flip back over,it cancels out any small error in the angle of grinding you may have made. Getting the ends to perfectly mate for welding is very important. You do not want any bump in the blade as it runs in the saw. If you have a bump,you did not hold the blade in perfect alignment while grinding the ends. That will cause breakage.
If the weld goes pop when you hit weld,it will be no good. Re grind and try again. The weld should smoothly let the blade ends sink together,squishing the metal out in a smooth motion. Allow no little holes,either. Place the weld in the anneal position next,where the welder's jaws are farther apart. You want to carefully heat the weld red hot,but not hotter than red. I reduce the red heat slowly by punching the anneal button with a little more time between punches,stringing it out to several punches. The object is to cool the blade as slowly as possible. Mind you,these button punches are not even a second apart,slowly extending the time to just over a second.
The next important step is to never GRIND the weld smooth. I only ever FILE the weld. It should file easily. If it does not,anneal it some more. Filing is an excellent way to see if your weld IS annealed. Grinding will tell you nothing about how hard the weld is. I avoid the dip that can easily occur when grinding with the small diameter wheel that comes on most welders. That is another reason to only ever file the weld. Do not reduce the thickness of the blade at the weld.
The last,but equally important thing to do is,after you have completely gotten rid of the excess metal around the weld,is replace the weld in the anneal position in the welder. The welded joint will be filed clean and bright. CAREFULLY give VERY short little punches to the anneal button,and heat the weld to BLUE. Try not to go over the spring blue color,and NEVER accidentally heat the blade red hot. If you do,clean the weld again and heat it only to blue.Re annealing the weld is good practice as you can see when you reach the blue color best only when the blade is bright after filing the joint. A well worthwhile extra bit of insurance to get that weld dead soft.
I never have problems with premature blade breakage in my small saw,and the blades last until they are fully dulled.
Welding a blade takes some finesse,but if you can learn to do it exactly as described,you can make your blades last until they need to be changed.
I have had my little Dayton 4x6 since 1974,and it is still my go to saw because it is so simple to use. The Roll In is for cutting large material,though I have ACCURATELY sawn up to 6" diameter stock in the little saw by cutting as deep as possible,and rotating the stock. I used to make a lot of spinning chucks from steel,and have cut a lot of large diameter steel with the little saw. Getting a bandsaw to saw accurately also takes finesse in things like tightening the blade just the right amount.
As mentioned,I have the same problem. I will say that learning to get the most from these small saws has a learning curve.
