bandsaw resaw capabilities

[Mac Houtz]

I have an older craftsman 14 inch bandsaw that I bought when I was first getting started. It has been very functional and done most of the work I have asked it to do.

I break down a lot of rough lumber, and build a lot of smaller pieces like boxes and cabinets where the carcase sides, drawer bottoms and sides, etc. are often 1/2" or less. The waste factor drives me crazy; I hate turning perfectly useful lumber into chips flying out the back of the thickness planer. While I love handtools, including handsaws, resawing by hand is not something I have much interest in on larger stock. That leaves my puny craftsman bandsaw, whose resaw capabilities in cherry are less than desirable, or the tablesaw, which seems like a great way to lose fingers.

The question is, if I want to be able to reliably resaw boards up to, let's say 8" wide, in conventional hardwoods like walnut or cherry, what types/sizes/h.p. of bandsaws should I be looking at? I have a chance to pick up a two year old grizzly 14 inch right now at a great price, but my sense is that it will not be much better for resawing.

Thanks in advance for any info you all can provide.

[Myk Rian]

I re-saw up to 12" on my 1/2hp 1966 Delta 14" with riser. Set up properly, it does a great job.
They can be had for less than a new saw.

[Mac Houtz]

you make a good point in that it might be more than the machine itself that is lacking. I am sure there are probably half a dozen upgrades I could make that would significantly improve my old saw's ability.

[Lee Schierer]

I had difficulties resawing with my 14" Delta when I first purchased it. Even checking the alignment didn't help much. I was resawing some cherry from an large piece that was a fireplace mantle at one time and noticed a hot rubber smell. I check the drive belt and it was pretty hot and not overly tight. I tighented the belt properly and it was like having a new saw. Recently I was given a sample 3/4" BS blade made from thin material and it really works well. I wish I could remmber the name of the manufacturer. This blade cuts very well and has almost no tracking problem due to the width.

[Richard Coers]

Based on experience, resawing is about 75% blade quality and operator skill, and 25% machine. Most guys shove the stock into the saw with too much speed. The gullets in the blade fills with sawdust and with no place for the dust to go, the blade wanders or bows. Then they overtighten the blade since it bowed, and still shove too fast. You should not see any sawdust between the boards when you are done cutting. A sharp blade is imperative, and no more than 3 teeth per inch. With all that said, your saw should do the job just fine unless it has something like a 1/2 horsepower motor. I've resawn quite successfully with a 3/8" blade. The fence must be set to what the blade wants to cut, not square to the table. So any machine with a 3/4 hp motor or bigger should easily resaw 8" stock.

[Jim Rimmer]

I agree with the others about tuning up the existing saw, new belt and an improved blade and maybe you will see the improvement you want. It's a pretty small investment before you buy something else. However, if the Grizzly you've found is priced right, bigger motor, etc.. you could get it and do the same tune up. Take a look at this thread by Van Huskey for some blade info. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?149862-Lets-talk-bandsaw-blades!

[Phil Thien]

Well, unless you have a bandsaw stretcher, I doubt you will get that Craftsman to resaw 8" material. Isn't it limited to 6"?

I have an old Skil 10" bandsaw that does up to 7" resaw. It was made in Taiwan. The 1/2-HP motor allows me to resaw 7" material beautifully, but I do have to watch the feed rate. And that is fine. I take my time, it isn't a race.

I think if I did a lot of resawing, I'd be inclined to upgrade to a saw with a 1-HP or 1.5-HP motor.

[jonathan eagle]

I think it is like driving a corolla vs a mercedes benz. Both will get you'll get there eventually.
I 's still rather have the bigger car.

[ian maybury]

Must say that while I'm no great expert I'm firmly in the 'plenty of saw' camp - especially where a very stiff frame, ability to properly tension a good blade (for the application) and heavy wheels are concerned. Very high power seems to become important only when very deep cutting is required in hard woods with coarse blades run at higher speeds.

Saws vary, but my experience when (after years of perfectly satisfactory mostly profiling use) I went to re-saw with a well known (here) Euro model at high end hobby/claimed entry professional level was that I spent weeks playing with different blades from both sides of the Atlantic before being forced to conclude that despite its having a claimed 12in of vertical capacity that its actual re-saw capability in harder woods was around 5in. It'd re-saw slowly at that depth, but over that it simply couldn't be tensioned enough (at max) to prevent a nasty screaming vibration which seemed inevitably to lead to bad drift. Call me stupid, but I could not find settings or a blade that avoided the problem.

I've since with a lot of help from people here switched to a used example of a highly regarded heavy duty Italian model, and while it's early days the difference is night and day. Even running free it's so much smoother, but re-sawing (so far only on an M42 bi-metal 3tpi blade, the carbide is yet to go on) seems to be point and shoot. It just walks through the wood (up to 9in so far) with no change in tone. Experimenting with reduced blade tension vs that recommended delivered a similar scream to the above.

My basic attitude is that I want a saw that does it's job consistently and reliably once it's set up right - not one that only works once a month under the light of a full moon when the stars are in alignment. What I mean by that is that unless there's a sweet spot you can consistently hit you really need a better saw that can be trusted.

My sense is that there's a hell of a lot of saws out there that were never designed with deeper re-sawing in mind, with the result that there's quite a few in the grey zone where they will do a job when highly optimised, but not otherwise. There's some too that despite appearances and misleading claims of vertical capacity in the literature can't even achieve that sort of result.

The 1M$ question is where the boundary lies for your sort of work - and I found it next to impossible to get a fix on that from forum reports for specific models of saw. Short of hands on trials with sample saws (which wasn't an option for me) it's maybe a matter of making sure you've more than got the 'cubes' for what you want to do.

Lots here advise a used Italian welded frame saw or similar from Taiwan if the budget is a bit tight, but do the detail homework or prove it with a test run as there's models that look very similar but which on close inspection turn out to be quite a bit lighter in construction. The Hammer seems to be one saw that stands out as performing well at what is the lower end of the Italian models.....

Just one view.

ian

[David Kumm]

Ian makes a good point. If you do alot of resawing vs once in a while look at a little bigger saw. An 18 or 20 is built substantially more heavy but still has a pretty small footprint. If cost is a factor, watch used. If you prefer the smaller saw, check out the thread here discussing Walker Turner saws. The 16" is really well thought of and there is a 14" for $400 being discussed here now. In resawing it is all about the strength of the frame, particularly the neck. The older delta's are good saws as well. The 14" may need some tweeking depending on the spring strength. I am biased however. My idea of a small saw is a 20" Yates. Dave

[Jim Matthews]

Michael Fortune is a regular contributor to Fine Woodworking, and accomplished builder, and busy instructor of woodworking.
He can afford to have any machine he likes, and uses a circa 1980 Delta 14" with a riser block. He chimes in on all the points mentioned above in this video.

I can say two things after following his instruction:
I no longer have drift, which makes cutting longer sections much easier.

Cheap blades, made well with fewer teeth make a HUGE difference.http://www.finewoodworking.com/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesArticle.aspx?id=34062

[ian maybury]

I read Michael Fortune's piece too Jim, albeit quite some time after experiencing the issues mentioned in my post with the older saw. He doesn't at first seem to say anything very magical or out of the ordinary, but the critical point is perhaps the use when re-sawing of a skip tooth blade, and moderate feed rates. Also, but less critical (as we've discussed before) that running the side guides close in helps too - maybe because it damps blade vibration. He's not overly ambitious in his depth of cut either.

This I guess is what you are pointing to in saying that FEWER TEETH help a lot too. i.e. correct blade selection is fundamental.

Lots of gullet space should help to avoid the blade binding on sawdust, which is presumably at least part of the advantage of a skip tooth blade. Binding must by effectively jamming the blade in the cut and lifting the cutting edges away from the wood account for a lot of the need for blade tension and power too. Maybe this is how Michael gets away with a lightly tensioned blade on a smallish (but actually very decent quality, and with a solid looking frame) saw - he seemed to be getting quite decent re-saw speeds for the type of blade too.

The trial I mentioned above with the Agazzani on an M42 3tpi I suspect demonstrated this. It cut straight and clean, but beyond a certain feed pressure (on 9in depth of cut, and at a cutting speed which seemed a little lower than what I'd been expecting) the 'crispness' went out of the cutting action - maybe the result of dust production reaching the limit of what the blade could properly clear?

Another take on this point is the coarse pitch and very pronounced gullet clearance run by carbide tipped blades. I haven't tested one yet, but judging by video demos they seem to be able to cut much faster and more cleanly than the more traditional ones which normally don't often get any coarser than about 3tpi.

To the point I made on the advantage of more heavily built saws. The Agazzani didn't start to vibrate or drift when the 3tpi blade reached its limit in the way my older lighter saw would have done - which is where I think is the advantage of the stronger saw and higher blade tension kick in. To put it crudely - a stronger and more capable saw will tolerate enough over feeding for even a fairly insensitive user to figure it's reached some sort of limit. It'll tolerate less than 100% optimum or sharp blades better too. And that's before factoring its ability to run bigger faster cutting blades (like say the Woodmaster CT) than the typical hobby saw.

There's no doubt a lot more than just fewer teeth that determines how a blade performs. What's interesting though (if it's true that fewer teeth help when re-sawing) is that if you trawl through some blade manufacturer's data or mag tests (e.g. FWW 2004) they don't bring out this point. Most of the maker's selection advice seems to relate to more to general profiling and mixed use than re-sawing. (e.g. min radius, min no of teeth engaged in the cut are what they talk of)

The issue is perhaps that the lighter saws which also use the same blade stock don't have the power and the tension to handle blades with more aggressive tooth forms/more 'bite' in deep cuts - the FWW test mentioned the saw stalling in a couple of cases. i.e. the perceived absence of any need for/benefit from more power (as Michael says) may in practice be a consequence of a chicken and egg situation. As in the blade manufacturers maybe design their blades to limit the number of teeth engaged and how much self feed they have to avoid power issues on typical lighter saws. This may also explain the interest in using thin blade stock too.

There was actually pretty much no discussion in the FWW piece about the merits or otherwise of different tooth forms, just the usual tabulation of test cut results. They tested only two skip tooth types, but I couldn't really separate out whether or not they did better.

Putting the Woodmaster CT on the Agazzani will tell a lot for me....

ian

[David Kumm]

A 14" bandsaw, with the correct blade, spring, motor, guides, etc. can be made to resaw, but that is quite different than being the best choice as a bandsaw to buy for resawing. I find to hard to believe that Michael Fortune chooses the Delta because it is the best resaw. If you are buying a saw with the purpose of resawing, there are better choices. That doesn't make a 14" saw bad, just not the best option. Buy the stoutest saw you can afford and tune it up as you would a lesser machine and it will be guaranteed to outperform. Dave

[george wilson]

There is an OLD MODEL(better) Delta Milwaukee 14" bandsaw in the tool section of Ebay for $349.00,right now. I have had 1 since 1964,and it is still my only wood bandsaw,though I am fixing up a 1950's 20" Delta. I have done a lot of resawing on mine. I make guitars,and many times have resawed thick rosewood for matched guitar backs. Mine has the height attachment.

[glenn bradley]

My 2HP, 17" does a nice job but, I wouldn't turn up my nose at an extra pony or so.

[jonathan eagle]

I had a 2HP 15" grizzly. I just think more power is better, even in the presence of a good blade. As David put it. If you are buying now and can afford it, get what you need. It is very different from just making do.

[ian maybury]

Old vs. new may be part of the story with Michael's approach in the FWW video as I think you are saying too George. His saw while a 14in looked very well built - nice solid cast iron frame, good table, nice chromed metal hand wheels and no doubt decent fits and tolerances too. I'm not familiar with many saws, and definitely not with US models - but it wouldn't come as a surprise to hear that some of the problems with recently manufactured lighter saws flow from design, materials and manufacturing shortcomings.

You said it more directly than me David, but yes. High skill levels may deliver a set up that works in demanding conditions on smaller saws, but the 'sweet spot' is probably going to be smaller than on a larger model. If you are skilled it'll allow you to get the job done on a lower spec machine, but it wouldn't necessarily be the solution you would choose given freedom to go for the ideal solution for your needs. Against that there's no point getting sucked into a crude throwing money at problems, as without intelligent selection and use it won't necessarily buy any improvement. (the extra cost has to target and resolve specific shortcomings)

'Robust design' is the term used for this in the management of product development - the Japanese for example gained much of their reputation for quality by ensuring that their engineered products were robust performers that didn't need babying or high skill levels to perform as billed, and keep on doing so - and at the same time were competitively priced....

ian

[michael case]

+1 on everything Richard Coers says.