Thread: Bandsaw or Swing Blade

its a bit more incentive to learn how to bandsaw properly nothing like failing to bring home the bacon to give a man a little wake up call I have night mare's about this once a week. Still its better to have tried and failed then to have not tried at all itspossible.

i don't think i'd like to take that beast out of your shed in the first place! pardon my ignorance,but what's the problems with bandsawing? is it the way the blades react to the timber,tension problems,crappy trees? i'd love to pick up a small one for resaw work but don't need another headache.i've got enough of those allready

Originally Posted by Stopper

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Long wide boards attract a premium price. A swinging blade mill would have difficulty achieving this quantity of 12x2s however....... Bandsaws are notorious for cutting badly. If you take your swing blade mill out you will come back with a cheque; Take your bandsaw out and you may not!!!!

cheers
Steve

Steve

A very realistic comment on bandsaws. I dont think you need worry with those boards. They look beautifully sawn with no waves.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by charlsie

i don't think i'd like to take that beast out of your shed in the first place! pardon my ignorance,but what's the problems with bandsawing? is it the way the blades react to the timber,tension problems,crappy trees? i'd love to pick up a small one for resaw work but don't need another headache.i've got enough of those allready

Agreed, although designed to be portable my mill stays put these days. The quote, "if I take my swing blade mill out I'll come home with a cheque. If I take my bandsaw out I might not" came from a portable miller in Brisbane who operated a dinasaw and a peterson. I agree with his assessment. Bandsaws can run sweetly or they can be a real problem. The reasons are numerous but I would say the most common problem is the bandsaw blade. Sometimes a new blade straight from the manufacturer won't cut. . The other thing you mentioned can also contribute along with feed speed, horspower etc but if you plan to run a bandsaw you need plenty of spare blades.

cheers
Steve

fair enough,sounds like using the slabbing blade with the lucas,some days can be a PITA, other days it works a treat

Hello Steve,

I recognise those machines. You cut some timber up for my father a year or so, he and I helped. It was black wood for guitars. geez you saved me, if we had of cut that on his saw I would of been tailing out in the son for a few days.

I was only thinking about you the other day, do you still have any paulowina?
Thinking of making an alaia

Thank Luxemburg,
Have you used all that blackwood up yet??
Plenty of Paulownia still available. Send me a PM of the sizes you need.

cheers
Steve

Nice boards there Steve. Looks like you could do with a twin blade edger in that shed too hint hint

Steve,

PM sent.

As far as I know that wood is still in the shed and has not been used. He already had a couple of hundred sets worth of nice blackwood and is still collecting- everyone in the family thinks its a condition he is always on the look out for blackwood and favours the stuff from around your way over all the other stuff.

I have owned and operated both a band and circular sawmills, but I would not consider myself and expert on either.

I would describe the cut quality challenge in a band saw as of knowing how to setup the saw with the correct tension and guide support. Which hopefully results in a high beam strength that should not be exceeded. (beam strength is the measure of how easily the band saw can be bent backwards, high is good low is bad).

Another issue for band saws is the saw do not stay sharp very long, using a dull saw will quickly cause cut quality problems; on my old mill the saw would only last for two hours. Cutting through the bark on some trees can dull a saw in four passes!

The good news is that there are many band sawmill folks that can easily achieve these settings and produce excellent cut quality. All while having a somewhat smaller kerf 3mm (.125") the recovery can be better.

I switched to a circular saw to reduce my saw sharpening cost, and I believed I could install a mill with equal capacity for half the cost, and yes make a gain in cut quality too.

Originally Posted by nifty

Nice boards there Steve. Looks like you could do with a twin blade edger in that shed too hint hint

I've got one. I took it off because it took too long to line the log up. It's sitting in the corner of the shed gathering dust. The breast bench gives me the ability to exclude more faults. (And old dogs find it hard to learn new tricks).

cheers
steve

sgchwend,
Agree with all that. My saws cost a lot to sharpen as well and I am careful to try and get rid of the bark and any dirt before sawing to try and get a longer run. I should learn to sharpen myself but you can't do everything.

regards
Steve

The time and experience needed to cut 'well' on a bandsaw before charging other people for your services was one of my considerations when originally buying my mill. I felt from talking to blokes on the Forestry Forum it would take at least a year of personal cutting every week before being good enough to expect someone to pay. Having said that I cut quite a bit for myself before I ever thought of going out charging for it... now it seems such a distant memory hehehe

Jeff across town has a bandsaw and after 6 years has finally 99% sure he has decided to purchase a sharpener.

Your right, it is just another thing to do, which isn't the fun part. Kinda why I don't cut firewood for anybody but myself.