Thread: Blade Drift

I recently bought my first bandsaw. It was second hand but was hardly used. It was previously owned by a fellow who had used it for a small project and that was it. However it was not set up properly from the start so i took on the task.
I moved the tracking of the blade so the set was forward on the tyre, moved inthe guides, it all looked good and then it started drifting. So i looked at the set of the teeth a little more closely and found that the set was off to one side.
I brought a set of sawset pliers, went with minimal kerf and blade is sweet, the finished cut has gone from needing a couple of passes on the jointer to only sanding or light jointing.

I brought a pair of pliers from UK and they are crap, they broke after setting 2 teeth. So i brought a second pair from an aussie site and they are a much better quality and they worked fine. Let me know if you want the details i'll post them.

Symmetry of the set can deteriorate over time, if you make a lot of curved cuts in the same direction. For smaller shapes such as bowl blanks for turning, it's beneficial to alternate the direction of rotating the blanks so as to equalize wear of the tooth corners. For larger pieces, such as round table tops, you don't have much choice. In that case, I'd get a second blade to use only for straight cuts.

Joe

Thanks for the responses guys.

In the absence of any replies to the original question, I thought I would just update with my own answer, for future reference.

Went back to basics with this, and reset from beginning:

Retracked blade to run symetrically right on the crown of wheel; Reset guides to skim touching just behind gullets; thrust a smidge behind blade.

Tensioned up blade to max, then slackened off couple of turns.

Whereas before, the blade would track towards the wheels, approx 5mm per 10cm cut, after, I could cut a 3mm veneer with the same blade, using the fence, with no drift.

Next question will be to see if tracking and tension would allow one to compensate for differential wear or set, as mentioned above, if it develops.

regards

Sorry I didn't reply to your 1st post Alastair, missed it. Glad you have found the correct solution yourself.

Blades shouldn't have a tendency to drift to one side or the other unless they're unevenly worn. If a new blade does this on a properly set up machine, reset it or take it back.