my bandsaw is errant

[davebrown]

why is my bandsaw wandering? after years of using one crippled and/or cheap bandsaw after another, i finally bought a jet 18 new in the crate (gloat: delivered, for $1025).

it has a 3/4 inch stock blade.

i have read that all bandsaws need some tuning, and this one has a bit more lower vibration than i would like, but it is perfectly functional as is. my brother the former jet aircraft mechanic will come out in the summer and we'll tune it properly. there is nothing wrong with it except some minor fine tuning.

here's the problem: when using the stock fence, i can't get it to rip/resaw worth a damn. the kerf moves off the saw line mark in a gradually worsening ellipse the farther you go.

the fence does not allow any adjustment as to transverse angle, so it seems impossible to use it for ripping or resawing.

the saw does have a tension gauge, and i have the blade tensioned to the proper GAUGE mark. i emphasize that, because i am betting the gauge is off and the blade is not tensioned enough.

any advice?

[BrianM]

Every bandsaw has (I've forgotten the correct word for it) "tracking".. the straight kerf line rarely runs parallel to the blade. You have to run a sample through, finding the angle it take to cut parallel to the edge of that board, and mark it on the table. Then if your fence can't be angled, take if off and clamp a nice straight board at that angle

[StevenBauer]

And get some good blades. The one that came with the saw is probably crappy. I use the Timberwolf blades from http://www.suffolkmachinery.com/
You won't believe the difference.

Steven

[john welsford]

I've sold a few of these, and while they look nice and are better finished than most Chinese machines they are still pretty much the same frames.
The will though work ok, but you need to be aware that even in small bandsaws the blade type is very job specific.
I'd suggest that you go to a saw filing shop that services the cabinetmaking and furniture manufacturing trade in your area, and ask them to weld up a blade for you with 3 teeth per inch, extra set, 1/2 inch or 5/8inch.
Set the top wheel tilt so the blade is running with the bottom of the tooth gullet right on the edge of the tyre, set the guide roller behind the blade on top and bottom guide about half a millimetre ( ok, about 20 thou inch or the thickness of your thumbnail) and use as much blade tension as you can get without having to use both hands on the adjustment wheel.
Side clearance should be about 3 or 4 thou and the guides should come to the bottom of the tooth gullet.
I reasaw 8in deep tropical hardwood with this type of blade, its not perfect but I can produce 1/8in veneers.

John Welsford




why is my bandsaw wandering? after years of using one crippled and/or cheap bandsaw after another, i finally bought a jet 18 new in the crate (gloat: delivered, for $1025).

it has a 3/4 inch stock blade.

i have read that all bandsaws need some tuning, and this one has a bit more lower vibration than i would like, but it is perfectly functional as is. my brother the former jet aircraft mechanic will come out in the summer and we'll tune it properly. there is nothing wrong with it except some minor fine tuning.

here's the problem: when using the stock fence, i can't get it to rip/resaw worth a damn. the kerf moves off the saw line mark in a gradually worsening ellipse the farther you go.

the fence does not allow any adjustment as to transverse angle, so it seems impossible to use it for ripping or resawing.

the saw does have a tension gauge, and i have the blade tensioned to the proper GAUGE mark. i emphasize that, because i am betting the gauge is off and the blade is not tensioned enough.

any advice?

[bloggs68]

Try this blade for resawing and you will never go to anything else - lennox woodmaster CT (1") would be fine on your saw. The finish is amazing ( a light sand required) and thin kerf ( around 1/16"). We resaw everything from carvel/clinker planking stock to veneers.

see

http://www.lenoxsaw.com/enUS/Product/WoodMaster_CT.html


http://www.woodworkforums.com/f27/new-re-saw-blade-78138/

regards,

AD

[Mrleft8]

Interesting responses from some.
Not all saws "track", only saws that are out of adjustment.
You want the blade running on the crown (center) of both the top and bottom wheel. The wheels should be planar (Parallel to eachother) The blade should be square to the table in both directions. The guide bearings (blocks?) should be the thickness of a piece of tissue paper from the blade. The thrust bearings should remain idle while the blade is running with no load, but should spin the second a piece of stock is fed into the blade.
Good, sharp blades are very important, and the ones that come with the machines are generally fit only for hacking up frozen meat.

[Robert W. Long]

Good and correct advice here from bloggs and mrleft8. I've used the lennox carbide resaw blades for the last seven or eight years and they are the best although expensive. You need to make a plywood resaw fence tall eneough for your stock and clamp it to the table at the angle your blade wants to cut.

[Chisler]

I have a sixty year-old Boyce Crain fourteen inch bandsaw. It was a free hand-me-down. It works well for me so far. I haven't replaced the tires yet, and they are probably not properly crowned. That causes the blade to creep toward either edge of the wheel. The tracking control will compensate, with a varying effect, depending on the tension dialed in. Because the tracking control is very touchy and to get the blade to stay on and run in the same track, the tension must be just right. When the track and tension are set so the blade position is stable with and without a load, the blade will vary from parallel only slightly, and the degree to which it is out and the angle depends on the position of the blade on the wheel and the amount of tension.
Running the blade out of position, away from the center of the wheel, causes the tension to be uneven from back to front, and that is what makes the blade angle out or in. Putting a load on it while it is out exacerbates the problem and also tends to shorten the life of the blade. I suspect it also makes a blade more likely to wander with variations in the wood. I am anxious to resolve the crown issue on my saw, even so the, when dialed in I can usually cut right to my pencil line, and I have made veneer slices from eight inch thick seasoned walnut—reeal sloowly.
Blade sharpness plays into this too. The harder you have to push to feed the stock, the more severe any problems caused by being out of alignment or mis-tensioned.
When I ran a CNC router in the rough mill of the oak furniture company, the jig would hold two rows of four, five-quarter bar stool tops. We would use a pattern to mark and rough out a stack of six at a time on the bandsaw right next to the router. Ideally, the corners were trimmed off leaving just about an eighth of an inch for the router, to keep the cutters sharp longer and reduce burning and tear-out, etc. I got where I could spin a stack through the bandsaw in about three turns in about five seconds. I would saw and rout a pallet or two of bar stool tops six feet tall, in a morning. Somebody was pushing red oak through that saw most of each day and I don't remember anyone ever having to mess with tracking or tension. I wish I could remember what brand and what size it was.

[ILikeRust]

1. Make sure the tires are properly crowned. If it's running flat poly tires, I'm sorry. Crowned wheels/tired make a big difference.

2. It's probably the blade. A while back I did a bunch of research to find the best price on pre-cut-to-length bandsaw blades and found this place: http://www.toolcenter.com/BANDSAW_BLADES.html. I have been very satisfied with Lenox blades.

[ssor]

One side of the blade is sharper than the other. you can either determine the skew and cut to that or you can gently touch the sharp side with an oil stone and dull that side a bit.

[davebrown]

thank you for all of the excellent suggestions. funny thing is, i have used bandsaws for many years, and this is myfourth one, but i have always had crippled or cheap ones, and through a fair amount of alligator wrasslin', managed to get every one of them to work at a satisfactory level. because this one is new, and reputed to be a good saw, i expect more from it. ok, it at least appears to be tracking properly, and it appears to be in planar. i used the manual's suggested settings (and a supplementary read in finest woodworking) to set the roller guides, and it has good ones stock. the table is square. i think the issue is the blade should be replaced with a better ripping blade, based on the above, and unless really cranking it down will help, i may have to abandon my metal fence and go with a plywood fence that can be angled slightly, to follow "where the blade wants to cut". a final question: about six or eight months ago i posted a question about a bandsaw blade, and i was told that a 1/2" blade is better for resawing than a 3/4", because you can hit proper tension at a lower ft. lbs. with the 1/2" than the heavier blade. this evidently is easier to load up to proper cutting tension. do others agree with that? simply put, should i buy a 3 tooth balde in 1/2, 5/8, or 3/4? i know this question was already partially answered.

thanks for the fine comments.

[Mrleft8]

Unless you're going to be really honking through BIG wet wood you don't want a 3/4" blade. It doesn't have as much to do with tension (You should have no trouble tensioning a 3/4" blade), as it does with drag. A 3/4" blade makes your saw work harder, it heats up faster which makes it dull faster, which makes you motor work harder and repeat...
A 1/2" 3tpi is a fine resaw blade. For really fine stuff like veneers you can get a 6tpi.

[SamSam]

the fence does not allow any adjustment as to transverse angle, so it seems impossible to use it for ripping or resawing.


You can adjust the fence. Pages 11 & 12 of this manual shows you how.
http://content.wmhtoolgroup.com/manuals/m_710750.pdf
Put a straight line on a board paralell to the edge and start cutting freehand on your saw. Once you get about 1/2 way through and have figured out the angle of feed needed, stop feeding the piece, hold it in place and shut off the machine. Loosen the four bolts on the lock handle end of the fence, adjust the fence to the angle of the sawn piece and tighten up the 4 bolts. You probably won't be aligned with the miter slot in the table, but that doesn't matter on a bandsaw.

[Mrleft8]

Phiil and I just finished cutting about 200 lineal feet of 8/4 Black Walnut into 1/8" laminations with a 4tpi 1/2" Hook blade. Clamped a straight edge to the table parallel to the blade and square to the front of the table. No drift, no wavy gravy, no bogging down. Fed as fast as I wanted with nary an issue.... Because it's set up accurately.

[davebrown]

thanks all. i will try your usggestions this weekend, including new blade.

[Tom Lathrop]

Good suggestions but I have another trick that will often set the fence angle more accurately. Make the trial cut in wood that is similar in thickness, grain structure and hardness to that which you will be cutting. The upper guide should also be set to the same height that the final cuts will be made at. On a crowned tire, I set the blade so that the blade, not including the teeth and gullets, is centered over the crown. On a flat tire, it took some experimentation to find the optimum spot for best tracking on the two such saws I had.

[davebrown]

i think those are flat tires. i didn't check them yeserday, but i do remember attaching the wire sawdust cleaning brush to the lower wheel...

[davebrown]

ok, i went to the local specialty store and bought a 3/4 3 tpi blade--they did not have a 1/2 blade. i noted that the tires are crowned, btw, and the saw seemed to vibrate the least with the teeth just past the crown. i went through the attachments with the saw, which again i got new in the crate wholesale, so no support....but it did come with the fence and with one of the round metal resaw attachments (is that called a drop point resaw fence?) for the fence itself. i installed both and ran a piece of pine through it, then marked the slight diagonal for where the saw "wants to cut" . i then set my angles with a 2x4 clamped to the tabltop and i was able to get a much better strip cut. the purpose of the cut is i am laminating ash for a coquina stem. i did it once out of old growth doug fir, which was not the best wood for a stem anyway, and second, i couldn't get consistancy on the strips. unfortunately, i ruined a lovely piece of wood for that learning exercise. so the ash came out very well and i think i hvae got the resaw problem whipped. i am at the learning stage with this here jet 18, but the capability seems to be there for about anything within reason. one reason i shelled out for the 18 is i want to build an upright bass and need it to saw the neck pieces. big, hardrock maple blanks.

so the final question is, since i bought the damn 3/4 inch blade ($47 &%(*#! dollars!) do i still need the 1/2 inch?

thanks all for helping me get this saw rolling.

[Rich VanValkenburg]

I've seen a few replies that match my own experience. The blade must be sharp, not just new. I agree that many new blades, especially the oriental mfgr's are just not sharp right out of the packaging. You need a magnifying glass to see the difference, but what you're looking for is any glint off the corner of the tooth away from center. Sometimes the blade just isn't as sharp on one set as the opposite. Any difference will make the blade cut toward the sharper side. (less effort) I have an old Sears 12" that I can clamp a fence to and it's set to the square of the table. It'll rip straight and true with no wander if the blade is sharp. A steady hand with a fine stone in a Dremel and 45 minutes is all I need to sharpen the blade. I rarely throw a blade out anymore. A dull blade will not only wander, it'll "barrel cut" on thick stock, then break from overheating. The crown on the Sears tends to get dirty from sawdust so I have to clean it off once a month. The directions for the saw show that a well-adjusted blade is not centered on the crown but slightly forward.(toward the operator). I wish I had a sharp 3/4" blade for my saw. That sucker should rip right through nice and true like a laser!

[floatingkiwi]

Unless you're going to be really honking through BIG wet wood you don't want a 3/4" blade. It doesn't have as much to do with tension (You should have no trouble tensioning a 3/4" blade), as it does with drag. A 3/4" blade makes your saw work harder, it heats up faster which makes it dull faster, which makes you motor work harder and repeat...
A 1/2" 3tpi is a fine resaw blade. For really fine stuff like veneers you can get a 6tpi.
This is the first sensible and relevant response I have seen from you. Granted, I haven't searched for and /or read all of your contributions but every other one I have seen has left me rolling around on the floor laughing or scratching my head in bewilderment. I knew there was a semi intellect connected to this screen name somehow. Well done. Carry on.

[davebrown]

sheesh. post no. 20 is kind of out nowhere. is it really necessary to flame someone whne they have made a good faith attempt to help out?

[Mrleft8]

so the final question is, since i bought the damn 3/4 inch blade ($47 &%(*#! dollars!) do i still need the 1/2 inch?

thanks all for helping me get this saw rolling.

If you want to cut curves, yes.
Before you spend more money at your local boutique tool store, go on-line to one of the sources mentioned above (I use Suffolk Machinery.com). You'll get an excellent blade for a fair price. When you get around to building your Double bass, you'll need a 3/8" 4tpi. You'll be tickled silly with the things you can make for Christmas presents with a 1/4" 4tpi.... Toys..... Toy boats, toy trains, toy cars...

[Eric D]

Personally Dave, I would take Lefty's advice. Take the 3/4 back IF you can, get online and get the blades he mentioned. I also like Tuff Tooth http://www.tufftooth.com/ blades in the industrial silicone 1/4" 4 tpi hook or skip but for all my resawing I TOTALLY agree with Lefty on the 1/2" 3 tpi as well. Mark Dungeneski (sp) is the bandsaw self help book guru and that is exactly what he professes as well.

I do a lot of decoys, side profiles are sometimes 8-10" or more, not fine work like the resawing high end wood, but I will tell you a 1/2 blade does a great job on more gentle curves, but I often just leave the 1/4 in the whole time, with a high degree of accuracy, again with the set up tuned right. I think it has more to do with the tooth count and thickness and of course, power of the saw.

Best of luck either way. Take some pictures to show us. Chalk a cut or 2 to test how well you do, then take a picture of the cut and look at it on the computer, funny how our eye will "lie" to us in person, but on a screen you can see the faults VERY easily.

[davebrown]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1296/4686733691_017eb98c46.jpg

[davebrown]

the laminate strips came out well. what appears to be a bad fit in the upper 25% of the photo is actually one slightly bad edge that is recessed about 1/8" or so. when beveled, it will be long gone. the wood is ash.

the next photo is a 2x1/16, perhaps less, strip that i cut while sort of of getting the hang of it. it is shown next to a matchbook. the matchbook cover is about the same. the last photo is a piece of resawn locust.

[davebrown]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4020/4687367282_2c6fa10ec9.jpg

[davebrown]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1294/4687366902_a6a26d569d_m.jpg

[davebrown]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4021/4687366502_eb7c9814ce.jpg

so except for the fact that i now have a $47 timberwolf 3/4 blade that i will have to replace, i would say it was a grand success.

[Mrleft8]

Very good indeed!
There will be times when the 3/4" blade will be very handy, so don't despair. Some day you'll want to resaw a big hunk of Bird's eye Maple into book matched panels, or something, and you'll have the blade for the job.