Bandsaw blade for veneer

[Jay Stellers]

I'm going to have some bandsaw blades made. My BS can resaw about 12"-13" give or take. I'd like to make some veneer but I'm unsure of what blade to use. I've cut slabs up for bowl blanks and I have no problem getting the BS to cut through the entire 13". I use a 3/4" x 3 tpi most regularly. The surface it leaves however isn't desireable for veneer. I suppose I can run my stock through the planer to get one nice face before taking it to the BS, but how do I get a uniform thickness piece of veneer straight from the BS without needing a drum sander? Is this even possible.

Jay

[george wilson]

I don't think you are going to make a bandsaw saw smooth enough to not have to sand the marks off. I have made 1/16" veneer out of 12" thick Cuban mahogany.It was very accurate for thickness,and no vibrations in the cut.It did have to be sanded smooth,though. It's the nature of the saw.

[David Christopher]

Jay, the blade that gives me the smoothest cut is the resaw king. you can hand sand the piece after resawn but ( the bad part ) these blades cost about 200 dollars

[Curt Harms]

The only blades I've heard of that might do what you want would be the Lenox TriMaster. That blade requires at least a 16" saw capable of quite a bit of tension. I have a Rikon 10-325 and it'll resaw fine but I have to plane or sand about .02" per side to remove saw marks. My blade is a Supercut 1/2" premium gold blade. I got about the same quality cut from a 3/4" Timberwolf. If your saw or your wallet doesn't like the TriMaster, you might try a Woodslicer from Highland Hardware. I haven't tried a Woodslicer but they get pretty good reviews.

HTH

Curt

[Peter Quinn]

A carbide tipped blade on a very good saw (well tuned and adjusted) is the only chance I think you might have for a saw and glue operation. Pretty much any other blade and most saws will leave you needing to sand. You could joint, slice, joint, slice etc, glue the jointed face down, then plane the rough face if the sawn veneer is thick enough thus avoiding the drum or wide belt sander. If you are doing a lot of resaw this way and don't want to buy carbide Lennox makes a bi-master bimetal blade that will out last basic carbon steel blades and cost much less than carbide. Otherwise a 3 TPI Timberwolf would be my blade for resaw.

[Scott Rollins]

I have a Rikon 14" and I have used the timberwolf, the Wood slicer ($35 or so) and the Carbide tipped Lennox Trimaster ($110 or so). The Trimaster is the only blade I will resaw with until I find a better. I can resaw very thin (1/16" over 12" wide) without barrelling if I keep the feedrate slow and constant. The finish is nearly glue ready-a little touch up with a ROS and done. The Wood slicer is a excellent blade for resawing if you only resaw occassionally. The finish is very good on a new blade. It dulls too quickly for my liking though and will begin to barrel if the tension is low or feed too fast. Hope this helps.

[Charlie Plesums]

I have used the TriMaster and like it, but a slightly cheaper carbide tipped bandsaw blade is the Lenox Woodmaster CT. I get a cut smooth enough to be the glue side of a veneer. The next layer gets sanded after it is glued on as a veneer. After 3-4 cuts, I hit the jointer again.

My 178 inch Woodmaster CT was only about $125 from Industrial Blade in Santa Ana.

[John Thompson]

I use Lennox 3/4" 3 TPI bi-metals which will give a smooth enough cut on the glue side to well... glue. But.. I have never seen any BS blade's cut that I would consider "goog to go" off the saw. IMO.. it just doesn't exist as it is just not the nature of a 3 tpi blade which is your standard tooth count for re-saw.

Sarge..

[Curt Harms]

I have a Rikon 14" and I have used the timberwolf, the Wood slicer ($35 or so) and the Carbide tipped Lennox Trimaster ($110 or so). The Trimaster is the only blade I will resaw with until I find a better....

I was under the impression that the Trimaster would fatigue and break rather quickly on a 14" saw. I guess this is not your experience? Hmmm....

[Doug Shepard]

Ditto the Trimaster comments. I think it's about as close as you can get to needing no sanding at all afterwards but I'm not sure you can totally avoid that. Sam Blasco also did a good comparison between it and the Woodmaster CT
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=66446

But all this is a moot point if your BS wont handle either of them.
Jay - what BS are you using?

[Arnold E Schnitzer]

I run a 1", 3tpi blade with carbide teeth from Suffolk Machine on my 18 Laguna. I use a special fence I made that is nearly 7' long. The result is terrific, but there is still some bandsawn roughness to be worked out. I think you will need to find someone near you with a drum sander. Or, if extreme accuracy is not needed, you could sand the veneers with a random-orbit machine, working on a ridgid surface. If you have a wide enough jointer, you could face plane before each pass, and that way only have one rough side. Good luck!

[Chris Padilla]

I've been resawing lottsa walnut veneers for my Tansu (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=92396) project.

I have a 1" Trimaster (1/16" kerf, carbide, 2-3 var pitch tpi), a 1" Woodmaster CT (0.051" kerf, carbide, 1.8 tpi) and a 1/2" Diemaster2 (0.035" kerf, bimetal, 6 tpi, hook style--near as I can tell, this is likely the blade David Marks uses for slicing veneers).

Right now, it is a toss-up between the Trimaster and the Diemaster2. While the Trimaster has a larger kerf, it leaves a slightly better surface than the Diemaster2. I am NOT impressed with the Woodmaster CT...pretty rough surface but at 1.8 tpi, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Also, the Diemaster2 is about 20% the cost of the Trimaster and for my 20" bandsaw (MM20), it take 14' of blade and costs can get up there!

Even with all this, I start off with S4S (maybe S3S depending on the wood), slice a veneer, plane, slice a veneer, plane, slice a veneer, plane.... I cut all my veneers to 3/32" and then drum sand down to 1/16". The sanding part is slow, mind-numbing work but I've gotten excellent results from this procedure.

As to how you cut and press/glue your veneers, really depends on your project. If you need to do any bookmatching or slip-matching, getting even thickness for all your veneers could be very critical. If you need to veneer only one side of a panel, it may not be so critical what the glue side looks like.

[Charlie Plesums]

I was under the impression that the Trimaster would fatigue and break rather quickly on a 14" saw. I guess this is not your experience? Hmmm....

The older blades had a less flexible base or something... fatigue was a problem until a few years ago. Apparently Lenox has gone to a different metal.

At the last AWFS I was talking to a Lenox factory rep and asked him about smaller saws... he said he used a TriMaster on his home 14 inch bandsaw without problem, but a narrower blade (I don't remember whether it was 3/8 inch or what). His bias was to go to a narrower blade with the smaller saws that don't have as strong a spring or structure. The spring determines the force on the blade. However blade tension really needs to look at the stress on the blade... the amount of force over each unit of cross-section area of the blade... the tension on a trimaster is often 25,000 pounds PER SQUARE INCH, so if you have a smaller blade cross section, you need far less force.

Incidentally this is why some people cuss the tension guides on their bandsaw, and others swear by them... the guides are only correct for a particular blade thickness, which is rarely noted. My big bandsaw says it is for a blade .019 inches thick. I have never seen a blade that thin... most of the ones I use are .035, and my tension gauge is off by about 2:1.