Thanks Bruce! Happy Friday!
Do you happen to have a pic of the
sliding "squaring block" in action?
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Bandsaws For Luthiers
- Thread starter Bruce Johnson
- Start date
Thanks Bruce! Happy Friday!
Do you happen to have a pic of the
sliding "squaring block" in action?
Here's a basic sliding squaring block that I use all the time. You can see the grease and wear on it!
Pretty simple; a block of wood with a face plate, made and checked to be square. It's kind of hard to demonstrate while holding a camera....but I think you get the idea of how it works. Gently hold it against the side of the workpiece, using it to keep the workpiece square to the table. Move it as needed while steering the board along the pencil line.
I have a design in mind for a better squaring block fixture thing, which I think will make resawing easier and safer. Now that I've got the big bandsaw, I need to build it and try it out.
Pretty simple; a block of wood with a face plate, made and checked to be square. It's kind of hard to demonstrate while holding a camera....but I think you get the idea of how it works. Gently hold it against the side of the workpiece, using it to keep the workpiece square to the table. Move it as needed while steering the board along the pencil line.
I have a design in mind for a better squaring block fixture thing, which I think will make resawing easier and safer. Now that I've got the big bandsaw, I need to build it and try it out.
Wow, reading that is like a weight lifting off my shoulders.
I've tried all manner of fences as well, but I always come back to just sort of "freehanding" it when bandsawing. I use a 1/2" 3tpi blade in my 14" with a 6" riser setup, and I've found that just trying to carefully follow a pencil line does a better job for me than working against a fence. I'll have to try your squaring block, but I'm not losing too much material when resawing right now. I've been embarrassed to admit that I can't get a dang fence to work, so this revelation is like a therapy group!
One other note about the "freehand" resawing:
When we can, we do it with two guys. One guy stands in front of the bandsaw, and is responsible for pushing the board and steering it along the pencil line. The other guy stands behind the bandsaw table, holding the squaring block against one side of the board, and watching to make sure the board stays up against the squaring block, perpendicular to the table. As the board feeds through, the rear guy assists with the feed, gently pulling on the board. But the front guy still does the steering. As the board is nearing the end of the cut, the rear guy holds it stable while the front guy grabs the sacrificial push block, to push it the last inch.
It's a lot to watch by yourself, so it helps to have a second person. It's easier to keep the board perpendicular when looking from the back. And it's safer keeping everyone's hands back away from the blade.
When we can, we do it with two guys. One guy stands in front of the bandsaw, and is responsible for pushing the board and steering it along the pencil line. The other guy stands behind the bandsaw table, holding the squaring block against one side of the board, and watching to make sure the board stays up against the squaring block, perpendicular to the table. As the board feeds through, the rear guy assists with the feed, gently pulling on the board. But the front guy still does the steering. As the board is nearing the end of the cut, the rear guy holds it stable while the front guy grabs the sacrificial push block, to push it the last inch.
It's a lot to watch by yourself, so it helps to have a second person. It's easier to keep the board perpendicular when looking from the back. And it's safer keeping everyone's hands back away from the blade.
I was thinking about starting a new thread on LC to talk about bandsaws, but think Bruce’s is appropriate. Let me know if you think it should be in a new thread.
I found this video on the Little Ripper and what this guy does kind of tossed out my conception of drift..
What do you all think? Cool or what?
I always seem to get better straight sawing or re-sawing by cutting with my fence or brace on the right side (like Bruce’s technique). Now I’m tempted to make another jig
I found this video on the Little Ripper and what this guy does kind of tossed out my conception of drift..
What do you all think? Cool or what?
I always seem to get better straight sawing or re-sawing by cutting with my fence or brace on the right side (like Bruce’s technique). Now I’m tempted to make another jig
What's the deal with old machinery? What's the reasoning behind buying a 50+ year old bandsaw?
Is it a matter of collection, vintage looks, new ones are too expensive, maybe old ones are better in some ways?
Were there necessary security upgrades?
Is it a matter of collection, vintage looks, new ones are too expensive, maybe old ones are better in some ways?
Were there necessary security upgrades?
Simply, the old ones are made better.
They are made to be repaired as opposed to being thrown away.
Much is made of plastic today which is great for tolerances but plastic bends and breaks.
Safety upgrades............are at the discretion of the owner BUT considering new saws, those have more spent on complying than they do on the machine itself. Couple that with how those safety items are so cheesy, is scary.
Old ones are made better.......now if we could only get the operators to read the handbook BEFORE any work is attempted.
I agree 100%. Proof in the pudding:
I bought a WEN 10" band saw, and after a year the lower guide bearings no longer spin.
I called customer support left a message, and heard via a review that they do not carry replacement bearings.
Still officially waiting to find out first hand. I did recall that "back in the day", when I was an avid skateboarder that you could revive bearings by soaking them in Oil like WD40 or Greese... That worked for now, but really to Ross's point, they make them to be thrown away...
I still am planning on using the WEN for as long as I can, but really they've failed in the customer service area thus far in my opinion.
I'm still interested in hearing what anyone thinks about the video I posted above regarding band saw drift
Bearings are generally generic off the shelf items for manufacturers. I'd be really surprised if they're using something custom sized specific to their band saw.I agree 100%. Proof in the pudding:
I bought a WEN 10" band saw, and after a year the lower guide bearings no longer spin.
I called customer support left a message, and heard via a review that they do not carry replacement bearings.
Still officially waiting to find out first hand. I did recall that "back in the day", when I was an avid skateboarder that you could revive bearings by soaking them in Oil like WD40 or Greese... That worked for now, but really to Ross's point, they make them to be thrown away...
I still am planning on using the WEN for as long as I can, but really they've failed in the customer service area thus far in my opinion.
I'm still interested in hearing what anyone thinks about the video I posted above regarding band saw drift
I've lost some guide bearings on my Grizzly band saw. I just took them over to the parts counter at a local industrial equipment shop and they looked at the size, went to the proper bin and handed me replacement bearings. Didn't have to involve Grizzly at all.
So I don't think you need to go through WEN to get the bearings you need.
I think it proves what Bruce is saying, with the manual block you are adjusting for the pressure that the cut wood is creating. Also I think the guy is saying that you can end up with uneven dulling of the blade creating drift. I am extremely jealous of that guy's ability to cut veneers, makes me want to run out and buy that jig! I'm far from an expert, basically a novice so I'm sure others will have better opinions.
I also bought a WEN bandsaw. The achilles heel on mine has been the blade guide, it got stuck. I pulled the whole thing apart and found that the teeth that the gear ran in were full of compacted sawdust. I cleaned it out, sprayed on some silicone lube and it works great right now. I would expect bearings to wear out eventually, in the mountain bike world that is something you have to change just about annually, I don't consider that to be a big problem. But overall I've been pretty happy with how mine is working. Getting a good blade is the key, I only wish I somehow kept track of which blade worked and which didn't I've had some very good blades and some crappy ones.
I also bought a WEN bandsaw. The achilles heel on mine has been the blade guide, it got stuck. I pulled the whole thing apart and found that the teeth that the gear ran in were full of compacted sawdust. I cleaned it out, sprayed on some silicone lube and it works great right now. I would expect bearings to wear out eventually, in the mountain bike world that is something you have to change just about annually, I don't consider that to be a big problem. But overall I've been pretty happy with how mine is working. Getting a good blade is the key, I only wish I somehow kept track of which blade worked and which didn't I've had some very good blades and some crappy ones.
I agree, and will go down to Grainger to pick some up (most likely in-expensive) It's just that these are listed replacement parts in their manual..
My blade guide gets stuck as well. I think sawdust gets stuck in there as lowering it and raising it has been a bit of a stuckish situation. I'll probably need to take it apart and silicone lube it up as well. I also find that wider blades tend to be hard to take out (unless I pull both ends of the blade more taught). I have gotten "good" life out of the thing, and made some great cuts in my limited experience, just need to service it myself I guess (not complaining about that).
I should have taken that guide apart a long time ago, it's been sticky for a while. It was pretty easy to remove, clean, lube and replace, it's super smooth right now. I wonder how long it will stay clean. I've just added dust collection to my shop (including this saw) so I hope that helps a bit as well.
I was thinking about starting a new thread on LC to talk about bandsaws, but think Bruce’s is appropriate. Let me know if you think it should be in a new thread.
I found this video on the Little Ripper and what this guy does kind of tossed out my conception of drift..
What do you all think? Cool or what?
I always seem to get better straight sawing or re-sawing by cutting with my fence or brace on the right side (like Bruce’s technique). Now I’m tempted to make another jig
That is a cool fixture, particularly if you are rough cutting your own small logs.
I didn't find anything controversial about what he said about drift. I guess that means I agree with him? Any bandsaw blade will start developing some "drift angle" as it wears. That is, it will start cutting in a line slightly off angle from the straight back of the blade. So, when you are free-hand cutting to a pencil line, you need to adjust the angle of feeding of the board to keep it sawing down the line.
But that's only marginally related to the problems that happen when you try to saw up against a hard fence. Sawing against a fence, all kinds of things can cause the wood to push the blade sideways, away from the fence, off the line it's supposed to be cutting. A lot of things have to be just right to keep that from happening. Some drift angle in the blade may contribute to the problem, but it's not all caused by drift angle. So, adjusting a slight angle into the fence, to compensate for blade drift angle, isn't the single answer to getting a bandsaw to saw against a fence. It may even make things worse. Lots of other things can still cause the blade to be pushed away from the fence.
Maybe that's what the controversy is about? Some folks claiming that adjusting a fence to compensate for drift angle will solve the problems of sawing against a fence? I don't keep up with all the woodworking magazine articles anymore.
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I have a generic but related question.
I do metal work with old rare vehicles with the occasional bit of luthiery.
Noticed the choice of teeth per inch on the blade on a few examples was around 1 TPI?
Why?
I usually cut metal and run a raker cut of 8, 10 or 14 TPI, slow speed.
I also build coachwork that has metal wrapped around a hardwood structural framework, the door are internally framed in wood along with the rest of the body. When I do any of the coachwork, it's a dedicated blade. But I've never used anything like that on hardwoods which include Black Locust, which from my experience is not an easy wood to work with most times. BL was a ship building wood, which for open cars, is a good choice.
What are the advantages of using a blade with so few teeth? What speeds are you using?
When you are resawing thick boards, like 8" or 12" tall, it's all about preventing the shavings from jamming up in the slot. It's a long slot that the blade has to drag the chips down through. Fewer teeth are better, to get the chips flowing out and keep the blade cool. Big specialty resawing bandsaws often have 1 tpi blades for that reason.
When I got my big Davis & Wells 20" saw (at the beginning of this thread), I initially fitted it with a 3/4" x 2 tpi hook blade. But I found that was a little too coarse for the work I was doing. Also, the 3/4" wide blade has a larger turn radius, which was a problem on some of the neck-sawing that I do. I've settled on a 1/2" x 3 tpi blade for that saw, the same as I had on my Grizzly 16. I regularly resaw 8" to 10" boards and saw out 4" thick hard maple neck blanks on that saw, and that blade works well.
I'm no expert on this by any means, but I took what Bruce said about resawing without a fence to heart and it worked great. A line on top versus a fence is so much better and there's a lot less waste.
Minimal TPI is a fantastic thing as well when it comes to resaw. The teeth carry that material away fast!
Now one thing I'd like to share is a small bit about the difference between blade depth, thickness, and how it relates to power of the saw itself.
I now use a '76 Rockwell 14" with extension. It's 110v, 20 amp, and (I think) 3/4" hp. Not the strongest saw by any means, but enough to make basses or cut up a side of beef (but I only do the first one).
Recently, I was resawing some 8"-ish boards for tops. The blade I was using was 3/4", 3 tpi, and in theory, should have been the ultimate resaw setup.
Well, it wasn't. The blade would deform in the cut and left me with all kinds of squirrely boards.
I switched out to a 1/2" 3 tpi blade, which was also a little thinner kerf, and made the same cuts. It was like a laser through those boards.
That was all related to the friction involved. A wider blade needs more power to run through boards like that. If it doesn't have it, it bogs down, moves slower, there's more friction to deal with, more heat, more deformation... it just wasn't good.
When you go with a thinner blade and less tpi, the motor works better with it. If properly set up, you can easily adjust your method to get a nice, even cut with what should be less effective. I didn't believe it at first, but it works. @Hopkins clued me into that when the only saw I had was a 9" Skil hobby saw, but it made cutting through 2" thick ash a breeze, compared to the 10 tpi blade that came stock.
Check out carbide.com for their selection of Lenox blades, cut to size. That's where I got mine, the price was great, and you can get whatever size you need for most applications.
Minimal TPI is a fantastic thing as well when it comes to resaw. The teeth carry that material away fast!
Now one thing I'd like to share is a small bit about the difference between blade depth, thickness, and how it relates to power of the saw itself.
I now use a '76 Rockwell 14" with extension. It's 110v, 20 amp, and (I think) 3/4" hp. Not the strongest saw by any means, but enough to make basses or cut up a side of beef (but I only do the first one).
Recently, I was resawing some 8"-ish boards for tops. The blade I was using was 3/4", 3 tpi, and in theory, should have been the ultimate resaw setup.
Well, it wasn't. The blade would deform in the cut and left me with all kinds of squirrely boards.
I switched out to a 1/2" 3 tpi blade, which was also a little thinner kerf, and made the same cuts. It was like a laser through those boards.
That was all related to the friction involved. A wider blade needs more power to run through boards like that. If it doesn't have it, it bogs down, moves slower, there's more friction to deal with, more heat, more deformation... it just wasn't good.
When you go with a thinner blade and less tpi, the motor works better with it. If properly set up, you can easily adjust your method to get a nice, even cut with what should be less effective. I didn't believe it at first, but it works. @Hopkins clued me into that when the only saw I had was a 9" Skil hobby saw, but it made cutting through 2" thick ash a breeze, compared to the 10 tpi blade that came stock.
Check out carbide.com for their selection of Lenox blades, cut to size. That's where I got mine, the price was great, and you can get whatever size you need for most applications.
I agree with you there regarding matching blades to the saw’s power capabilities.
I bought a few blades from carbide - good quality and very reasonable $!
Related to Bruce’s resaw block/technique, I saw some video a while back where a guy was resawing with push paddles on the left and right - essentially holding both and sandwiching / running the board straight down the middle (with a drawn line).
I’ve also seen removable vertical bar/tubes on fences which allows for adjusting left and right as needed. This looks appealing from a jig copy stand point and maybe the same concept (I’m not 100% sure though).
That's what I'm envisioning, too. But I haven't gotten around to building it yet. Two long squaring blocks, maybe 18" or 24" long. One pair would be 4" high x 4" wide; for ripping 4"-5" maple. The other pair would be 7" x 7", for resawing 7"-12" boards. Made from 3/4" MDF, a vertical strip and a horizontal strip with some gussets to hold them square. The gussets would also serve as the handles.
The idea is to hold the board between the two squaring blocks, lightly pressing them together to keep the board standing up vertically. Feed the whole thing through the saw, steering it to follow the pencil line on the board.
A key design feature of my idea: At the back edge of the vertical strips are a couple of square holes. Slip a short length of scrap wood through the holes of the two squaring blocks. That scrap stick pushes on the back edge of the board, so you don't need to let go of the squaring blocks through the cut. When you reach the end of the cut, saw right through the scrap stick.
I need to build a set of these soon. If it works like I'm picturing, it would make resawing much safer. For the wood and for me!
Any of you who understand my description, go ahead and make up your own.
I did a lot of experimenting with that idea too. I call it a Line Fence. It's a vertical piece, standing up perpendicular to the table, with a radiused edge up against the blade. It can be vertical piece of tubing or a block of wood with a radiused edge. It can be mounted on either side of the blade. I've made several of different heights that had wood bases and were clamped to the bandsaw's table. It's a fence, but the contact with the wood workpiece is just a narrow vertical line. The key thing is that the line of contact should be aligned with the front edge of the blade teeth.
The Line Fence is the best method I found for accurately resawing in a bandsaw against a fence. It prevents many of the problems that you'll have with a straight fence, but not all of them. You still have to be careful not to wedge the wood between the line fence and the blade, pushing the blade away from the fence.
I use a short Line Fence or block when I need to quickly cut a bunch of small strips, that are too fragile to cut on the tablesaw. When they don't need to be super accurate in width.