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Thread: How do I learn to resaw?
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22nd May 2020, 01:52 PM #16
Opinion shared! I didn't notice that link to your channel and having now seen your saw I concur with T91. That model is one of the ones used at the Guild and is generally regarded as the least favourite; it usually only has a 1/4" to 5/16" blade in it and is used for cutting outer curves on bandsaw boxes. Saying that; I still prove I can resaw on it every time I get pulled in to rectify whatever defect the last (mild profanity deleted) managed to install on it.
The lower wheel axle is actually adjustable; there are four cruciform machine screws with locknuts around the axle that can be used to adjust it to any angle up/down or left/right. DO NOT PLAY WITH THESE unless your axle is obviously pointing in the wrong direction. The axle should be pointing at 90 degrees up, down, left and right to the frame; or possibly drooping straight down a bee's winky to compensate for the frame flexing when you tension the blade.
Something to definately fix is the upper guide bar; it is an ally extrusion that is trapped between 2 bits of ally angle and I bet yours will move around, upsetting the blade guide position. Take off the top wheel and loosen all the screws holding the bits of angle and clamp everything either using firm finger pressure or spring loaded clamps before re-tightening. You will now find the adjustment to be uncomfortably stiff so lubricate with WD40 or CRC and; well, learn to live with it. Sorry; but it's an abysmal excuse for a guide bar.
Now you can set the guides, but ensure they are NOT touching the blade. It is worth stripping them down and getting rid of any entrapped dust; top and bottom. These guides (which are nothing more than simple ball races anyway) have an annoying habit of twisting so ensure they are coplaner with the blade, just not touching.
See how you go!Nothing succeeds like a budgie without a beak.
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22nd May 2020 01:52 PM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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22nd May 2020, 02:33 PM #17
Dave, I know you asked for help with technique, not equipment recommendations, but have a look at this.
W4224 - BP-355 Wood Band Saw | Hare & Forbes Machineryhouse
On special for the EOFY sale and everything. 14" bandsaw but with 10" of depth of cut, 2hp motor, takes a 16mm blade, less than $1100
It probably has similar footprint in the shed to your current saw but is far more capable as a resaw machine while being small enough to take a fine blade for the things your current saw was designed to do as well.
As I said earlier I have two bandsaws - 14" and 21". If a law was passed that I could only have one bandsaw I would sell the other two and buy this one. All I would be losing on the swap would be 2" of resaw capacity and 7" of crosscut capacity (which is rarely used anyway)
Just a thought.I got sick of sitting around doing nothing - so I took up meditation.
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22nd May 2020, 05:18 PM #18
I've found a couple of other things that can be a problem with bandsaws. On my Hammer N4400, an otherwise great piece of machinery, it is impossible to tighten the fence sufficiently to stop it moving under the force of the featherboard and me. If it moves, even imperceptibly, the saw will run off to the right, so now I clamp a stop against it to prevent it moving.
The other thing was that some blades seem to be set so that they cut to one side. This results in a concave/convex cut. Better quality blades solved this problem.
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22nd May 2020, 06:34 PM #19... and this too shall pass away ...
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This thread might help. I use the jig for resawing and for cutting veneers.
Veneer cutting jig
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22nd May 2020, 07:57 PM #20Nothing succeeds like a budgie without a beak.
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22nd May 2020, 11:21 PM #21Senior Member
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your mention of a push stick brought something to mind that I am forever showing people in the workshop.
When I resaw I do not push the push stick with my arm.
I hold the push stick against the top of my hip and use my body to provide the motive force (at 115Kg, I can apply a goodly amount of motive force with my hip). There are several facets to this.
Number one is I commonly use a big scary Wadkin bandsaw with a big scary blade. (I think its a 20 inch). By using my hip for motive force I can guarantee that if my push stick slips when things get difficult to control in that last inch or so of the cut, my arm will not push my hand in the direction of the blade, because my arm is not providing any force, and my hip is unlikely to go past the leading edge of the table.
Number two is that my hip provides a surprising amount of control over the feed pressure, allowing much more precision in the cut. It frees my mind from self preservation preoccupation to be able to listen to the machine and get a much better sense of the rate its happy to cut at, which translates into a higher quality cut.
Number 3 is that it provides better "steerage" in how much lateral force I put on the piece. I use a pretty gigantic push stick for this. about 40mm x 50mm x 450mm, because it frequently has to push thru tree branches 8" thick which I saw into 1/2 round billets, and after you get used to it, it really does provide superb control.
But the same technique is a good one to develop even on a smaller machine imo, if you are re-sawing.
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23rd May 2020, 09:17 AM #22GOLD MEMBER
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23rd May 2020, 10:39 AM #23... and this too shall pass away ...
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The prototype is still in use. Used it last week to cut veneers for a lingerie cabinet for Her Indoors. I take the time to ensure the set up is right, (do a test cut on an MDF off-cut) then I feed in the slab and lean on the end. The guide does everything else wonderfully.
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27th May 2020, 03:19 PM #24GOLD MEMBER
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Thank you very much for taking the time to have a watch and give some feedback.
Tell me about it!
I had changed the blade and reset all the guides before the incident with the Gympie Messmate. 1st piece fine, 2nd piece ruined. This guide setup takes while some time on this machine. Plus I can never get these guides quite right as per Snodgrass instructions. I have to settle for getting as close to what he recommends as I can. And that does not include time checking the table and everything else on it.
People seem to be suggesting I go through all this before every cut. However as things stand, by the time I unpack my shed and I set it all up then make 2 or 3 re-saw cuts, it is time to pack it all away to attend to family matters.
I had mine custom made for my machine and sent to me from McDiven Saws based on recommendations on this forum. McDiven Saws recommend the actual blade specs. The ones for resawing are about 19mm wide (3/4"?) and 4TPI.
Do I need to order some 1/2inch 3 TPI for hardwoods?
Basically suck all the fun out of the entire experience in other words.My YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/2_KPRN6I9SE
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27th May 2020, 03:36 PM #25GOLD MEMBER
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My YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/2_KPRN6I9SE
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27th May 2020, 03:38 PM #26
When I want to resaw, I pull the 21" bandsaw out from its storage spot into it's working spot, give it a quick checkover (30 sec if nothing wrong but as long as it takes if something does not look right) and turn it on and resaw away. I go through the Snodgrass procedure if I have to change blades or pull the saw apart for cleaning/maintenance. That saw has been using the same blade since it was new 10 years ago. TCT teeth last a long time even in the old hardwoods I use. It just gets a soak in vinegar every now and then and I think I sharpened it once.
In short - NO - you don't have to do a full setup each time you use the saw.
My blades for woodwork and metalwork all come from McDiven. If your saw will take a 19mm blade then use that for resawing. Just to be sure, when I say take a 19mm blade I mean will it tension 19mm blades sufficiently, more than what the wheels are wide enough to support or any other limiting factor the saw itself puts on blade width. Tension is where it is at.
While a wider blade is better for resawing that may be subjest to it being properly tensioned. the narrower the blade the higher the tension a saw can apply to it. I would use a well tensioned 1/2 inch blade over a badly tensioned 3/4 inch blade. On a 1/2 inch blade I reckon 4tpi is about as low as you can get, 3/4 inch would go down to 3tpi. (On my 1" blade I have 2tpi)
If you only use your saw for resawing then you would not often change the blade so setting up would be minimal. If you do other things, well, thats why I have a 21" and a 14" bandsaw.I got sick of sitting around doing nothing - so I took up meditation.
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27th May 2020, 06:36 PM #27
I'm with Doug on the blade width, I believe 3/4" is way too wide for a saw of that size. I am surprised that McDiven's recommended that to you. A 1/2" blade will be about right so that you can get the tension up without having to squeeze the life out of everything. I brought my 14" bandsaw secondhand and it came with some spare blades, 2 of which were 5/8" and I found that I had to apply too much pressure to get the tension right and even then I thought it wasn't tight enough so I ditched them and only use 1/2" blades now for resawinging and most other jobs. If it starts to drift or gets harder to push the wood through I give it a sharpen with the Dremel. I don't have to spend all day fussing around with it, it just cuts nicely. Just feel your way through with the wood, don't try to push it too fast making the blade deflect away from you.
This is similar to the one I have and even though the specs state that it can take a 3/4" blade I wouldn't consider putting one on.
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27th May 2020, 06:47 PM #28I got sick of sitting around doing nothing - so I took up meditation.
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27th May 2020, 10:54 PM #29Senior Member
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What I am suggesting is that if this is your machine Carbatec 14" (345mm) Two Speed Bandsaw | Carbatec it has an 1100 watt motor. Its specifications are such that it can handle a 19mm blade, but the bigger the blade the more horsepower it takes to drive it, and the more teeth you have in the cut, the more horsepower it takes to drive the process because you will have more sawdust in the cut at each instant.
with the setting up of the machine many times to overly familiarize yourself with it, I am suggesting that you should become so familiar that you can detect instantly when it is going off. Personally I rely heavily on sound and feel through the fingertips. but that is because I know how it should sound and feel on multiple machines (and I still stuff it up occasionally).
by going down to a 1/2 inch blade, I am suggesting you might be able to put a bit more of your horses into the teeth points by sacrificing a bit on the width of the blade and the thickness of the blade. A 1/2 inch blade should handle anything you can fit on that machine.
by going down a bit in the tooth pitch to a 3 TPI blade you are reducing the number of points your motor has to drive at any instant during the cuts, which means each point has a bit more power driving it. Basically you dont need an more than 4 teeth in the kerf at any stage of the cut, so if you are resawing a 3" board, a 1.3"pitch is fine.
by suggesting using the push stick on the hip, I am suggesting you can smooth out the cut, and spend a bit more time listening to the sound so that you can detect any sound of strain or over-pressure in the cut.
If I was assisting one of our members with their cut, I'd either use a push stick to keep the bottom of the board against the fence, or set them up a feather board
If I was going to set up your machine for me to do the cut, I'd be using a 1/2" Lenox Woodmaster bi-metal 3TPI. If I had to use a 3/4" blade I still go for a bimetal Woodmaster_B, but I'd go for a 1.3 TPI pitch.
If the cut was absolutely super critical, like for my wife or some similarly omni-potent being, and I had 3mm of room to play with, I would run a kerf with the table saw up each edge of the board where I wanted the resaw kerf to go. The effect of this is that when you put the board on the bandsaw, a bandsaw blade always follows the path of least resistance, and with therefore follow the2 tablesaw kerfs. This trick wastes a little more wood, but it reduced the amount of power needed and provides a path of least resistance with less meat to cut than any alternate route , and a guide for the operator to follow.
That is just my opinion of course, based on setting up 1/2 a dozen bandsaws for dozens of WCG_ACT members.
Bear in mind that at some stage I will resaw all the 2" and 3" boards in this shed, and I must have re-sawed pretty close to a shed full over the last couple of years.
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31st May 2020, 10:17 AM #30Senior Member
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worthwhile watching: Stumpy Nubs YouTube on Bandsaws, tradeoffs between machines, re-sawing capacities vs material, construction, blades and Horsepower. Contains links to specific, more in depth, subject material
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