Wood handsaw blades have 6 to 10 teeth per inch (rip vs crosscut is another discussion. Wood bandsaw blades may have as many as three large teeth per inch, where metal will have say thirty-two small teeth per inch. Cutting thick metal requires quite a bit of blade tension and the frames and guides of wood bandsaws will not always support enough.
Where most folks go wrong is trying to use the same bandsaw for both wood and metal. Metal saws like coolant and chip pans where wood saws like dust collectors. Just a couple of things to think about, I am sure there are more like running the right RPM’s..
If you need to use your band saw for cutting metal bars, solid rods and plates into size, then purchase a horizontal band saw. If you are unable to get a horizontal band saw, you can still cut metal along a straight-line with a vertical band saw. Ideally, you should get a coarse blade for cutting software materials like wood and plastic and a fine blade for cutting harder materials like metal.
Occaisionally I cut wood with the saw in metal speeds, its just slow. This saw has 1hp motor, when cutting metal it never sounds like the motor loads up at all. Some modest adjustment in speed will make the wood saw a very respectable non-ferrous saw.
The greatest difference in woodcutting vertical saws & metalcutting vertical saws is the blade speed. “Typical wood saws, like the popular Delta 14”, run the blade at 3000 SFM. Excellent for softwood, hardwood, many plastics, thin nonferrous. Metalcutting saws run anywhere from 100 to around 350 SFM, roughly 5% of the speed of a woodcutting saw.