Bandsaws

I don't have any advice on where to buy.  But regrading BB guides with metal, every bandsaw I've used that was dedicated to metal had BB guides.  That's vertical, horizontal and portable ones.  I've never used cool blocks with metal so I can't say how it would compare but I would probably stick to ball bearings without a good reason to try blocks.  One possible issue I can see is swarf building up between the blade and the blocks causing the blade to run hotter.  

The build up of swarf, specifically cutting wood, is what worried me a bit with bearings.  I had a wood cutting bandsaw with full bearing guides and the two on either side of the blade on the lower guide would occasionally have their circumferences caked with wood dust, this would place one heck of a radial load on both and control the position of the blade with less accuracy.  The upper guide bearings were largely immune to this as the blade had a couple turns prior to fling everything off.  The metal blocks on my wood cutting 14" Deltahave a shearing action presented to anything stuck to the side of the blade so the blade stays pretty clean.  My 20" BS has disc style  lower side guides and bearings for the upper side guides, tha  hybrid approach works very well.  I have a couple porta-band saws and they both use bearing guides but at a lower sfm than I suspect this old Rockwell spins at in low gear.

Was a tad disillusioned with CN content when I came in as a "non registered newbie" and started wading through the Forum topics. Not wanting to read 2,000+ odd chit chat on some threads that seems to be between a selective few members, that often had little to do with the topic, and would not enduce a newbie from signing up... in fact would be quite intimidating... something I have found on many other forums.

I picked this topic due to little activity.

Back to topic...

Disclaimer... I'm about as close to an engineer as the bar car on a high speed, driverless train. 

Stumbled across this thread... with my limited knowledge, I would opt for good quality sealed bearings... and a regular blast of air on the lower ones... might take 5 minutes to fire up the compressor, but a 2-5second burst will have you coughing sawdust and when the dust settles, clean bearings. 

I found a set of guides for it I'm hoping to pick up next Tuesday.  They're not bearing guides, just basic blocks but I have to start somewhere and don't really want to drop Carter coin not knowing yet if everything else is up to snuff.

I use ceramic blocks on top and bottom on my 16” WT, they work great. 

As I said... I'm no engineer... as an after though, I'm now wondering if compressed air might blow the dust further into the bearings...  I do it, and will keep doing it, and it doesn't seem (repeat seem) to have caused grief... but then again I haven't put a microscope or a thermometer on it.