Sawing heart pine question..

[Bill White]

We resaw a LOT of heart pine, white pine at work. These are old building timbers being used for rustic (sorta) tables. This stuff is FULL of pitch and really gums up a blade in a hurry. Is there a spray compound that will help keep the blades from loading with pitch?
The 24" BS using a 1" 3 tpi blade really loads. Alternate blade config? Blade w/ wide tooth set?
Whatcha think? I'm changing/cleaning blades sometimes twice a week.
Bill

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I'm just guessing, but it seems like a wide kerf would help. Which blade are you using?

[Bill White]

We use industrial circular (carbide) blades, both rip and crosscut. The BS blades are from an industrial blade supplier in our area.
Bill

[Tony Joyce]

We use a pretty heavy drip of "Charlie's Soap" & water on our resaw blade(1-1/4" X 1.5TPI). No gumming sawing pines. It also works well as cooling on hardwoods and exotics.

Tony

[Bill White]

Tony, that one heck of a saw blade. Ya think I'm using too many tpi with the 3tpi blade? Are your carbide?
Bill

[Andrew Hughes]

Not sure if this will help you.But I have been resawing some pitchy cypress that's at 15% mc or better.Using a 1 inch woodmaster ct I think it's. 1.2 tip.The cypress dust is packing behind the blade and filling some of the kerf.So I know I need more set. What is saving me is the resawing red cedar.It removes most of the pitch. red cedar is dry.i suspect my blade will need sharpening after this job. Andrew

[Bill White]

I have some pieces of white oak that I've told the guys to use as a cleaner. Just some random cuts to help remove the pitch, but there is still some residual gunk.
Bill

[Tony Joyce]

We run about the same blade as you on a 24" vertical band saw(Oliver) & it works very well for basswood. It is manual feed though. All our blades are Lennox Woodmaster(both saws), on the horizontal resaw(Kent Baker) I try to run all my domestic and light exotics while the blade is new, as it gets more hours I use it to resaw the harder exotics. Bloodwood, Purpleheart, Chechen, Bubinga & Cocobola are very hard on blades. As it gets too dull to cut or breaks I throw them away. I probably go through one blade a month, usually resaw once or twice a week, unless it's a special order.

I think the drip on the blade would make a big difference with any resawing. The 1.5 or 1.2 TPI are not as coarse as they sound for resawing. Helps keep kerf clean and cooler blade, meaning longer blade life. How wide of Pine are you running. If it's wider than 6" you would probably benefit from a coarser blade.

Tony

[Scott T Smith]

We resaw a LOT of heart pine, white pine at work. These are old building timbers being used for rustic (sorta) tables. This stuff is FULL of pitch and really gums up a blade in a hurry. Is there a spay compound that will help keep the blades from loading with pitch?

Bill

Bill, on my sawmill I use a mix of Pine Sol and water, it works great. However, when milling we have a steady drip on the blade, which may not be applicable for what you're doing...

[John W Johnson]

We resaw a LOT of heart pine, white pine at work. These are old building timbers being used for rustic (sorta) tables. This stuff is FULL of pitch and really gums up a blade in a hurry. Is there a spray compound that will help keep the blades from loading with pitch?
The 24" BS using a 1" 3 tpi blade really loads. Alternate blade config? Blade w/ wide tooth set?
Whatcha think? I'm changing/cleaning blades sometimes twice a week.
Bill


I'd like to tag onto your post. I, too, have resawn a bunch of reclaimed heart pine, at least for a home shop. And i have a ton left to saw. I had no idea boards sawn 120 years ago could be so sappy. Most of my boards are 10-12" wide with a few in the 15-16" range. I've got a Felder 24" saw and 1" x 2-3 variable tpi Laguna resaw king blades. I've given up on any product to keep the blades clean for more than twenty to thirty feet of resawing. If there exists a coating that will help keep the blades from loading up, I'd sure love to know what it is. In fact it would be wonderful to know how much sap on a bandsaw blade is too much.

I'm also looking for the best way to clean the blade after it starts to load up. I'm thinking of soaking, but need a vessel to hold the cleaner. My blades are a little over 12" in diameter when coiled, at least a couple inches too big to fit into a 12" plastic cake carrier (please don't tell).