Thread: won't rip straight

Welcome to the wonderful world of bandsaws.
Is your blade absolutely razor sharp?

Thanks for the return (and quick at that).

the band has done very little work since bough new Dec 2004.

It probably has very little reason to be blunt.

Could the problem be caused by a bad "set" on the teeth on one side of the blade? (I just thought of that and haven't looked at it.)

Arthur

I have had that occur. But resetting a blade is very tedious by hand.
I usually dont rip with a fence, I draw a straight pencil line on the timber and cut to that instead.
Some timbers, e.g. radiata pine and oregon are difficult to saw straight due to the alternating soft/hard grain.

Maybe blade tension, or more likely, toooo many TPI and the gullets between the teeth are filling up and causing ur blade to wander. I set my side guide bearings a lot closer than you have mentioned and have no trouble. I recently ripped some 8" x 1" blue gum to 8" x 1/2" using a 1.25 TPI x 1" blade and no wandering, used a custom fence to help support the 3.8m while i fed it by myself.

Does it wander if you feed very slowly??? This will point you toward the TPI problem.

May also be a crappy blade or tension not set right.

There was a link to a site that has some info on setting lade tension but it's not in the best of the best & I can't find it in my favourites on this computer.
I must have to stashed on the work PC.

According to Mark Duginski (bandsaw guru to the rest of the world, in my view), bandsaws naturally veer off. He corrects this by cutting a length halfway, then resetting the fence to compensate for the deflection.

He doesn't mention, in his excellent DVD, what happens with different stock (ie types or thickness or moisture content, etc), but I suspect that one would have to re-compensate each time)

Cheers!

Originally Posted by Arthur

Could the problem be caused by a bad "set" on the teeth on one side of the blade? (I just thought of that and haven't looked at it.)

Yes. Try another blade, preferably same type but different brand. If it cuts straight, Bingo! Otherwise, keep looking.

BTW, I have my guides set to a cigarette paper clearance and just behind the teeth gullet. How far back from the gullet are yours set? If 'tis too far, the extra gap you have allows the front of the blade to wander with the grain; this is particularly noticeable on smaller blades where the distance between the back of the blade and the guides is rather short or the guides may even "overhang" the back of the blade.

Small blades are designed to "turn in the cut" after all.

Is this the original blade that came with the machine?
If so It's hardly surprising. Very common for people to post here commenting on complete change in personality of their band saw with the first new good quality blade.
cheers

This is not a sarcastic comment or being a search nazi Arthur but there is a lot of information here on bandsaws if you search for it.

There may be nothing wrong with the blade. Many people say that it's very unlikely that a BS blade will rip straight through a piece of wood: they all have a natural tendency to wander. The key is to find out what the wander is, and compensate for it. If you mark a line where you want the rip, start by feeding the piece into the BS freehand and cut along the line by eye. You will probably find that you skew the piece slightly to compensate for the blade drift. You can eitheer continue cutting the whole piece by eye, or set the fence at the same angle as the drift by stopping the cut, keeping the workpiece where it is, and sliding the fence against the piece to set the fence at the right angle.

Many people don't use the straight BS fence for ripping, instead using a single "point" fence (or an edge fixed vertically perpendicular to the table.)

This is the reasoning behind the fence you'll find in the "best of the best" forum here:

http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ad.php?t=12346

Try to get the blade running on the crown of the wheels by adjusting the tilt of the top wheel. I've always used a rip fence, and always been able to get the cut parallel to the fence using this method.

Also, as someone else said, the teeth may have too fine a pitch.