Black Heart Sassafras

Black Heart / Black Soul, I`m trying to reduce some boards from 30mm thickness to roughly half that for box making.
Have attempted to do so on 14inch bandsaw with new blade. The wood wants to grab and stop the blade. I have done thios with other timbers.
Is there something I`m missing or not been told about how Sassafras doesn`t like to be sawn?
Even the tablesaw found this stuff tough going at full depth of cut. Patience and fairly moderate feed rate made everything ok, but lost more in kerf than I would have liked.
What suggestions do you have or tricks-of -the -trade are there or notes anyone might have.
The wood is actually described by Tas Spec Timbers as "White Sassafras". It seems that that just means less of the pronounced bits of the black grain inclusions.
RB:?:(:o