Tall Bandsaw Rollerboard

I built a knockoff of John Lanciani's bandsaw tall feather board with spring loaded rollers, hence rollerboard. John was kind enough to send me some photos of his unit. I modified his design just a little bit, but the overall design is still John's and I take no credit for it. Here it is mounted to my Grizzly G0636X.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Fq...A=w471-h628-no

Looking at the business end of the rollerboard:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zf...w=w838-h628-no

As you can probably figure out, the rollers are mounted to pivot arms. Compression springs push the workpiece against the bandsaw fence. There are 10 rollers on my unit, probably don't need that many actually, and the overall height is about 13". Looking more closely at how the springs work:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Ov...w=w838-h628-no

The stock tall fence on my BS wasn't tall enough, and when I clamped a 12" tall piece of 3/4" plywood to it there was too much deflection from the springs pushing on it. That resulted in the veneer slice being wider at the top than bottom, so I built a new fence.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pe...g=w838-h628-no


It clamps both to the stock low fence as well as the table and is very rigid.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Or...w=w838-h628-no

The rollerboard assembly moves laterally on runners mounted to a base plate that moves front to back in the miter slot. The base plate is clamped to the table and the rollerboard assembly is clamped to the base plate with the star wheels.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Nb...g=w838-h628-no

If you look at the first photo you can see that the blade is completely shrouded by the fixed fence and the rollerboard. This saw has always scared the bejeebers out of me when I'm sawing wide veneer. No more.

To use the rollerboard you set the stock against the tall fence and push the rollerboard against it. Then I remove the stock and advance the rollerboard about 1/8" and tighten the star wheels. This gives sufficient force to hold the stock tightly against the tall fence but not so much to cause deflection in it. I cut this 10" wide board into slices about 0.095" thick and they are very, very consistent in thickness.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Tz...g=w838-h628-no

Best of all, there is absolutely no skill involved other than to use a constant feed rate. The rollerboard holds the stock tight to the tall fence, requiring no thought or attention from the user.

Hats off to John Lanciani's design, and his willingness to share it with me. I can now cut veneer more consistently with less effort and much higher safety. If you slice much veneer you might want to build one for yourself. With just a little prodding I could provide a SketchUp model and hardware parts list.

John

Sketchup! Sketchup! Sketchup!

Is that enough prodding?

Thanks for posting this. I'm saving your pictures and notes along with Lanciani's for when I build one. I love the design.

There is some discussion and pictures of his here: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...wing-questions
I think there is more elsewhere since I've saved some additional photos but I can't find a link at the moment.

JKJ

Awesome, thanks for sharing John!

Very nice work John (and John); you're on a roll!!!

Very nice John (and John)!

I made a functionally similar tool earlier this year but I like what you’ve done better in some ways. More points of contact, better individual pressure control, easier adjust. One thought is to have an increment assist for veneer thickness plus kerf to be able to quickly adjust the rollers.

http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.p...aw-Feed-Assist

Outstanding ideas from both inventors. Looks like it would be difficult to mess up a resaw using this method.

Additional kudos to John, as he sent me pictures as well a while ago, and I built a similar unit. It works great.

Instead of making mine attach to the miter slot, I drilled holes for two powerful Magswitch magnets, and that keeps it in place without clamping.

I've sold my bandsaw, so no pictures of it in use, but it works great. Thanks again, John.

Here's a couple of pictures I took a while ago of it.
Attachment 375712
Attachment 375713
Attachment 375714
Attachment 375715

I call mine a resaw jig, fwiw.

Bill, your design is outstanding. I thought about how to convert John's design to use tension springs in order to get longer travel at constant force. It looks like you've done it. It could be done with compression springs, too, with longer springs. I was all set to do that until I used the unit as I showed it and found that it works really well as long as I reposition it after each slice. But there's no doubt springs with longer travel would reduce how often you'd have to index the unit, regardless of which spring type is used.

Your idea about "automatic" indexing is good. I'll have to give some thought on how that can be easily accomplished. I had thought about making my unit advance using a captured nut and machine screw handle, but decided to try the manual approach first. I have to say, it's so easy to adjust that there's not a lot of time to be saved by adding that feature. Changing to Bessey Toggle clamps might offer the biggest time savings with the unit I now have.

Thanks very much.

John

Alan, that looks just about John's original concept. The "improvement" I made to the design was to get rid of the need for both compression and tension springs. By running the threaded rod through the pivot arm and screwing it into the T-nut the pivot arm is held in constant position, and deflects only when the work piece pushes against the wheel. It's still adjustable by screwing the threaded rod in/out, but that only needs to be done once during set up if you index the unit after each cut as I do with the cross slide base and you, I assume, did with the Mag Switches. That is a very clever idea, for sure. Thanks very much.

John

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John TenEyck

Alan, that looks just about John's original concept. The "improvement" I made to the design was to get rid of the need for both compression and tension springs. By running the threaded rod through the pivot arm and screwing it into the T-nut the pivot arm is held in constant position, and deflects only when the work piece pushes against the wheel. It's still adjustable by screwing the threaded rod in/out, but that only needs to be done once during set up if you index the unit after each cut as I do with the cross slide base and you, I assume, did with the Mag Switches. That is a very clever idea, for sure. Thanks very much.

John

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Interesting. A combo of both ideas (magnetic base, and simpler tension mechanism) would be awesome.

I can set rough tension by moving the base closer or farther from the fence before the cut. I tend to keep it there and just sequentially resaw pieces. It turns out it's not necessary to change that after every cut. A rough approximation is just fine.

I've got a large Felder bandsaw on order. Can't wait to try it with that (although I might want to build a taller one then. Time will tell.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John K Jordan

Thanks for posting this. I'm saving your pictures and notes along with Lanciani's for when I build one. I love the design.

There is some discussion and pictures of his here: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...wing-questions
I think there is more elsewhere since I've saved some additional photos but I can't find a link at the moment.

JKJ

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Thanks, John. That's my original post where John was so helpful getting my jig built. Far more pictures and explanation there of his original jig build.

you can also get pressure from wheels that compress. Not sure where they come from and they were not air, sort of spring loading only the compression was from the tire part itself. not alot of travel though.

More prodding! More prodding!
I would be very interested in a Sketchup drawing and parts list. Would be willing to pay you for your trouble.

Jim

Patience Jim.

OK, this link will take you to a page I created with everything you should need: https://sites.google.com/site/jteney...aw-rollerboard

Please let me know if you can't download the SketchUp model or access the photos, etc.

John