A little resawing help needed...

[Nick Lazz]

Laguna 14SE
Woodslicer

I have set my saw up according to drift etc. The blade cuts great however on larger resawing (10"-12") I am having trouble.

Here is what happens: I set everything up like I have read on here and Woodslicer directions and the first 6"-8" of the cut go great, then the board starts drifting away from the fence both on the back side of blade and at the bottom (starts kick away from fence).

Any ideas?

[Lee Schierer]

When I resaw, I use a curved resaw fence and draw a line on the top edge where I want to resawto guid my cut. With the curved resaw fence I can compensate for the blade drift off my cut line by moving the end of the board left or right. Since I'm watching the top I use a feather board to keep the bottom against the fence.

[Pete Bradley]

Technique. Do you have push blocks? For a tall resaw you need to apply some pressure to hold the piece flat against the fence. This is especially important for pieces that may not be perfectly square on the bottom. For a thin slice, I'll put the fence on the left side of the band, drive with my left hand, apply pressure and drive with my right using a push block like the one shown below. I don't draw any lines on the piece, the fence is what makes the slice straight.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41aZJO4gIbL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[Dan Friedrichs]

I have that saw and blade, and have never had any difficulty resawing. I know very little about bandsaws, but after having so much success resawing with this bandsaw using a flat fence, I can never imagine going through all the trouble of using a pin and drawing a line across the top of the board.

Are you sure you have the tension set high enough?

And as Pete said, be sure you're applying plenty of pressure to hold the board against the fence (I always use pushblocks)

[Chris Padilla]

Sounds like to me that you may not have all the drift compensated for.

Personally, and this may well vary depend upon the bandsaw, I think drift can be dialed out. It is all in the set up the wheels, guides, fence, table, etc.

Perhaps I am spoiled with my MM20 but it has no drift although I did spend time lining up the wheels, table, guides, etc. I can set the fence to the blade like one does on a table saw and resaw 1/32" all day long.

Try using a longer board to check your drift and see if you need to compensate more or better yet, try dialing the drift out of your bandsaw. 2x4s and 6s are cheap wood to practice on.

Good Luck

[Bob Direso]

My guess is your problem stems from not fully adjusting your fence for blade drift. Re check your blade drift and adjust your fence accordingly. If your fence is adjusted properly your board will be pulled into the fence not away from it. I also use a board clamped to my table acting as a feather board to hold the piece being cut into the fence. This helps me so I don't accidently pull the end of the board being cut away from the fence. As a final thought tighten your blade a little more than recommended by the saw gauge. I set mine halfway between the gauge setting and the next largest blade setting. Good luck, bob.

[Brian Kincaid]

...2x4s and 6s are cheap wood to practice on...

Highly recommend not using pine for this exercise. The pitch that builds up on the blade will give you fits.
-Brian

[Nick Lazz]

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I was able to make it all work, although not perfect.
What I ended up doing was cutting my 8/4 boards down to about 4". I think part of my problem was trying to resaw 12" wide boards. The saw, supposedly can handle it but I apparently couldn't and the drift was significantly reduced by cutting them down.

One thing on my saw is the tension gauge is a joke. I just crank it down until I get the deflection recommended by the blade manufacturer. Not exact obviously but best I can do. Is too tight a problem? Also, the saw uses 112" blades, I'm wondering if I should order them a little shorter so I can increase the tension as I seem to max it out sometimes on the wider blades. Any thoughts? What happens when the balde is too tight other then increasing the risk of breaking the blade?

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate it.

Nick

[Chris Padilla]

Nick,

Your blade length is always x" +/- y" so you can get them a tad shorter to test out your theory. You might be able to go 110"...check the manual.

The main problem with overtightening is usually blade breakage but if the spine of the saw isn't very strong, that could be tweaked I suppose. It all depends on the saw.

[Van Huskey]

Make sure you never bottom the tension spring out as this can cause all manner of damage. Short of bottoming the spring it is very unlikely you will hurt the saw, too much and you might pop a blade but unlikely on that saw unless it is a smaller blade.