after Shredd elevating my status, i am rather nervous to reply here- after all, the definition of an expert is. ex is a has been, and a spurt is just drip under pressure
it sure is easy to proclaim and tout what the best tool for the job is, but i always maintain the best tool is the one you have- and we all figure out a way to make it work, however if you are lucky enough to have a wife like BMorv, the 17" is a great option, that allows you to run a true resaw operation.
hp is critical, because if you lug the motor down, the blade speed drops, and then the gullets cant clear the sawdust adequately, then it starts to spill excessively past the blade- at best leaving a rough cut, or at worst sending your cut off at an angle. but by far the biggest issue, is now with the excessive friction you will be overheating the blade- and heat is a bandsaws enemy no. 1!!!
on my personal shop saw- i have a 16" saw. i run a 7/8" tooth pitch blade ( thats one tooth every 7/8") with lots of set and its .042 thick.
and i upgraded the motor to a 5hp.
smaller wheels wont like that thick of a band- on our big shop saw we run .050 bands.
and with smaller wheels you will need thinner bands, and in turn that means more TPI. Get as low a tooth count as you can get with lots of set, it will ensure adequate chip clearance, making for a faster more accurate cut, kinder on the saw, sure there will be a bit more kerf but we are only talking thou here!!
Set is so often overlooked, and its the most critical thing, you can get a hand setter- its a lot cheaper and a bit laborious- but its worth its weight in gold!!
we sharpen and set our own blades/bands- and we get an average of about 10 sharpenings per band- but we make sure they run cool all the time.
get the bands as tight as you can get them- you will never crank them tight enough with a hand crank to do them any damage- on our big saw they will tighten up to 2100 psi with a hydraulic ram, a blade can handle 15 000 psi of pressure- but will the bandsaw itself handle that???
there will be a lot of folk that will disagree with this, but if your machine has bearing guides- i would run bearing guides on the top and cool blocks on the bottom.
the cool blocks should just be clearing the band, so there is no scraping noise but as close as you can get them, the idea is, they will scrape the residue off the blade( sawdust) . on bearings, the sawdust falling through the blade guide will get "wheeled " through between the bearing and the blade, jerking and jarring the machine on a minute scale which in time will cost you bearings and other wear and tear.
learn how to tune your saw- lots of opinions on that out there too- and thats another whole can of worms~~~~
Topic: I'm going to need a bigger Bandsaw (Read 5626 times)
