Can someone tell me about resawing with a bandsaw?

[Tom Rick]

I am massaging the floor plans for the new shop and am wondering how much run to allow for the BS. I purchased a larger BS with the hopes of moving some of the lumber processing off the table saw. As I have never used a properly set up band saw for re-sawing, I don't really have a sense of how long of stock I might be trying to run through. I make long rails on occasion but invariably the table saw operation requires careful fence use with feather boards top and side plus roller stands far out to carry the stock. I don't know if the BS will end up as a viable option for this sort of milling or not & hence if I should try to allow the 12' of run on each side that is required.

Thoughts?

So far I have 9' on the feed side for the bandsaw.

Again, I do boat carpentry and am shooting for getting more efficient milling on the BS to save some of the expensive teak lumber from going to dust.

Thanks all

[Carroll Courtney]

Tom if this is what you do for a living,I would check into the horizontal bandsaw.You lay the wood down flat and a conveyor belt moves it through the blade.Since its laying flat all you need is infeed & outfeed rollers.Long length or short is no problem and blade drift is not an issue.Hardwood lumber mills use these to mill to different thickness but you still have to plane.
As a hobby,the horizonal is a pricey BS so the vertical is the answer.Something around 10' long would take awhile to do if its a 14"BS,to speed it up some you may have to move up to a 30"plus BS.I think that I did not help any but maybe at to the confusion some.I was putting myself in yur shoes----Carroll

[Van Huskey]

Tom if this is what you do for a living,I would check into the horizontal bandsaw.You lay the wood down flat and a conveyor belt moves it through the blade.Since its laying flat all you need is infeed & outfeed rollers.Long length or short is no problem and blade drift is not an issue.Hardwood lumber mills use these to mill to different thickness but you still have to plane.
As a hobby,the horizonal is a pricey BS so the vertical is the answer.Something around 10' long would take awhile to do if its a 14"BS,to speed it up some you may have to move up to a 30"plus BS.I think that I did not help any but maybe at to the confusion some.I was putting myself in yur shoes----Carroll

Agree 100% on the horizontal resaw but for 15 or 16" resaw your gonna be well over 10K, probably closer to 20. However no need to go NEAR 30" for a good vertical BS for resawing. A 20" Laguna or Agazzani with 20" of resaw is more than enough for 99% of people and the power is more than sufficient.


As for length if you have a solid 18+ inch bandsaw that has good power for resawing (4+ hp) a good wide carbide blade (Trimaster or Resaw King), long infeed and outfeed tables, a good SOLID fence and a power feeder the length will be limited by the height of the tree...literally. A good resaw BS set up correctly with a feeder will cut wood like a octopus wacked out on meth with a Stihl on each arm.

[Harold Burrell]

A good resaw BS set up correctly with a feeder will cut wood like a octopus wacked out on meth with a Stihl on each arm.

OK...that image is going to take a while to wrap my head around...

[Rick Markham]

By the time you wrap your head around that Harold, that methed out chainsaw totin octopus will have already resawed 200+ bf and stacked and stickered it all :eek:

[Tom Rick]

OK...that image is going to take a while to wrap my head around...

Ok, I think I can picture what he is talking about but is he saying this critter will cut straight...?
:p

http://steph-o.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Octopus-with-chainsaw.jpg

One more point for my shop- I am not processing huge quantities of wood on each contract. The last rail job come out of only 60 bf of rough lumber and this was rather larger than the typical project. What I am having a hard time understanding is if the resaw BS can manage the ripping operations of a table saw to the size of stock I mill. For this last job, three of the five 6/4 boards I purchased had ~1-1/2" of edge set over their 13' length. For this project, the crown was used to advantage to match the sheer of the boats rail where the stock was installed. I did however have to feed these boards along with a lots of feather boards at the fence and describing an arc with the stock as it went through (believe me- this was the only stock the supplier had at the length I needed or I would have gotten straight boards from the get go...).

So- I am hearing from you guys/gals that the answer to all the above is yes if the BS is large enough and has a decent fence. I am stepping up from a 14" bandsaw where I did not really try to mill boards of any size.

I guess a issue of vocabulary is on my mind as well- I am using "re-saw" as any dimensioning operation on the BS where perhaps it really means to split boards.. say a 8/4 into 4/4 stock?

Edit- my memory is going perhaps... the first project coming out of the 'new and improved' shop is another rail project of perhaps twice the size of the last. In this case the stock is 5/4 rough teak, milled out to 1-1/2" x1"- glue jointed, then glued up for a 44' long sweeping horizontal rail. I would have ripped out the stock on the TS to start but would like to use the BS to save some stock. I don't have my head around if a BS is happy with this sort of milling.. ie- lots of rips out of 10' boards.
I guess my question boils down to- are you BS guys allowing for as much stock run for your BS as the table saw? And using the BS as another ripping machine?

[Rick Markham]

As far as the Resawing, (cutting the 8/4 down to 4/4) with the set up like Van Described a big bandsaw will excel at! Especially with the powerfeeder. For the ripping operation, I really can't comment. Hopefully someone will chime in. I would be interested to hear a set up for this. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do it, I don't know how the bandsaw vs. tablesaw would compare timewise vs. efficiency wise. I'm sure on wood savings depending on the bandsaw blade used, you could save on some wood loss. I would like to know the answer too. :D

[Joe Chritz]

Assuming perfect rips on the bandsaw you will save about .07 inches per rip depending on tablesaw blade and bandsaw blade used. If you rip a 10 foot board perfectly 17 times you would have saved 1 BF of lumber. Since this is just in width and it is rare to get rough sawn lumber the perfect width to have no waste it is a theoretical savings at best.

Moving from a tablesaw to a bandsaw to resaw is a different story usually. Often you can get an extra piece, especially when doing thin veneers.

You can get set up solid to resaw large pieces for a relatively low investment.

Notice relatively, relative because compared to a dedicated horizontal resaw machine it is cheap.

Joe

[Tom Rick]

Assuming perfect rips on the bandsaw you will save about .07 inches per rip depending on tablesaw blade and bandsaw blade used. If you rip a 10 foot board perfectly 17 times you would have saved 1 BF of lumber. Since this is just in width and it is rare to get rough sawn lumber the perfect width to have no waste it is a theoretical savings at best.

Joe

Ok- thanks for putting some numbers on it. I had not thought this through beyond just crying about the 1" of waste I have to allow for every board I rip down to sticks and seeing the heaps of expensive saw dusk piling up.