Squaring Lumber

[Steven Fowler]

Dear Fellow Woodworkers,

I am buying new tools for my first wood shop(see below on forum) and am buying a 17" band saw and an 8' jointer more than likely(Both grizzly). If I joint an edge and a face how feasible is it to get squared lumber with a band saw? Any tips or tricks for doing this? I researched some but haven't really seen much on the subject. A planer is in the works but probably not for a few more months to get a quality one based on my budget so far.Will a bandsaw get me close enough to finish with a sander if it won't get perfectly square?

Thanks,

Steven Fowler

[Matt Day]

You need a planer to make the jointed face parallel. Unless you have a drum sander, there's not much getting around having a planer. You can get a used lunchbox style planer for a couple hundred on CL.
As for the edge, a tablesaw is the best tool for the job on bigger skinny boards. For small stuff and thicker boards, a planer works too. I would not consider a bandsawing edge good enough for a glue joint.
The main basic machines for a shop are the jointer, planer, and table saw - hard to get around having those, but there are some table saw-less folks on here. (Keith?) I'd be curious how they weigh in on this.

[ian maybury]

As above at the basic level, and this is speculative as i've never tried what you are asking about. It might/might not be possible to get by as you say.

As Matt a good table saw will put a straight and pretty clean edge on thinner stock, but there's some skill and an accurate set up involved. Much easier on a Euro style format sliding table saw if you happen to have access to one - it should produce glue ready material with the right blade in.

If using a bandsaw for thicker pieces as proposed a lot would depend on its quality, size and accuracy - and on how precisely sized/dimensioned you need your stock to be. In that if it can be relied upon to cut straight and square and at an acceptable speed on all boards (to leave a true and parallel if slightly rough surface) there might be the possibility of going a hair oversize, and then taking it back to the jointer for a light skim to clean up the sawn face. A heavy bandsaw running a highly tensioned carbide blade could probably pull it off, but it would be frustration road on any typically unreliable, light or a badly set up saw.

The jointer would need to be set up dead right/be capable of jointing a dead straight and true face too - to reliably jig the planed surface off the (straight) sawn face with minimal wood removal with no fussing about. The more material you needed to take off, the greater the risk that some of the original alignment will be lost.

Hand planing is another option for cleaning up sawn faces and edges. It involves skill and decent quality tools again, but has the advantage of delivering good control. A flat section of bench (pretty much essential) with suitable work holding would help a lot in that case.

The problem (again as Matt) with all of these methods has to be that if you have to spend to get set up the chances are you might as well go for a planer.....

[Robert Engel]

You can give it a try but I think you'll be disappointed in the results.

The best scenario is get a great cut with your bandsaw (quality resaw blade + high degree of tuning) followed by some hand planing.

There only a couple ways to get parallel and square faces/edges and a bandsaw doesn't figure into them.

Whether power or hand, you're gonna have to spend some $'s.

[glenn bradley]

Since this is under General Woodworking and Power Tools I'll assume you don't have a driving need to mill your lumber by hand. A jointer and planer are the team that get you started on squaring up lumber. the bandsaw is critical to my milling process in that it is my re-saw tool. If I am making boards for general use it goes something like:
- Joint a face.
- Plane an opposite face.
- Joint an edge.
- Resaw a board off the "blank".
- Use already jointed faces to plane opposite side of "board" and opposite side of "blank".
- Set "board" aside and resaw another board off the remaining "blank".
- Repeat till done.

I also generally plane the rough side of any remaining portion of the blank before I put it back in the wood rack.

[Al Launier]

If a table saw is not available, but a planer is not far off, then jointing the face & edge, followed by bandsawing the opposite face or edge, and then planing the rough face or edge would get you parallel/perpendicular surfaces to the dimension you want.

[Prashun Patel]

Thickness planing is not a job for a bandsaw, IMHO. It's one thing if you are planing down enough such that you're doing a 'resaw'. In this case, you could bandsaw, then hand plane the surface true.

However, in many cases, I'm just trying to plane shallow passes to get the surface flat and parallel to the jointed side. In this case, the bandsaw will have a hard time 'biting' in. You'd really be shaving, not cutting in this case. Unless you're using a stiff blade at high tension, this will be tricky to do properly for anything of reasonable thickness. Also, it is tricky to push narrow things squarely on edge through a bandsaw.

All this is to say, you'll likely require a handplane to supplement your bandsaw planing. Plenty of people do that, but they do it for the love of hand tools or the dislike of too many power tools. If you value time over ideology on this, then a lunchbox planer will be a more efficicient solution here.

[Jeff Ramsey]

You'll find that if your bandsaw has a rigid enough frame, that it can apply sufficient beam strength to a blade so that it won't deflect thereby permitting you to use it as a table-saw replacement (in most cases). There are articles on bandsaw beam strength, like this: http://www.finewoodworking.com/tool-guide/article/setting-bandsaw-blade-tension.aspx

You might want to ask Keith Outten about this. I believe he told me that he uses his Felder FB610 exclusively for ripping and not a table saw anymore, but clarify that with him.

[ian maybury]

A heavy bandsaw with a heavily tensioned carbide blade can definitely resaw accurately and effectively - but i don't think anybody said that it could shave a hair off an already cut surface.

Most commercial resawing for example is done on a band mill or maybe a band resaw with a power feeder - the latter is a heavy bandsaw's big brother.

The issue is more the next question likely to arise - the call as to the level of spec and type by which bandsaws become capable of delivering the required accuracy. It's a bit of a moveable feast. A skilled guy with a well set up and good example of a medium saw may get it to work (if he's not in a hurry), where somebody else may not using the same model of saw. Moving up the food chain there eventually comes a point where bandsaws becomes sufficiently robust that provided there's a good blade in and the saw is fairly well set up that it'll do the typical resaw job pretty much trouble free - and a lot faster. As in one of the 16/17in heavy duty resaw optimised or larger saws. The point where this transition occurs is determined also by the required depth of cut and to a fair degree the type of wood - deeper cuts in tougher woods are slower, and feed proportionally higher loads into the saw.

It depends too on how much hand planing or machine jointing the user is prepared to do - especially in the case of the former where pretty much anything is possible with enough work/time put in.

The right carbide blade (provided the saw can properly tension it) has the potential to greatly improve the surface finish and reduce any tendency to drift...

[Steven Fowler]

First off thanks for all of the replies so far.

I will be getting the 17" 2HP and the 19" 3 HP grizzly and hopefully one of the nice 1/2" or 3/4" carbide tipped blades. I feel like that should be plenty of power/blade/and frame strength to properly tension the blade.

Thanks,

Steven Fowler

[ian maybury]

I don't know the saw Steven, so don't take what i posted as a definite go.

The 16in or 17 in saws i was thinking of are the 5HP heavy duty resaw optimised Minimax, Grizzly (636?) or larger heavy duty Italian models (there's lighter versions probably intended more for profiling work), don't know which one you have in mind but it's probably lighter. Which could still be OK - especially if the work you propose isn't too heavy - but in any event it's a bit of a judgement call as to whether a bandsaw will do what you want.

It would be safer if you could before committing swing it to get a look at whatever saw you have in mind in action, or at least talk to somebody with one who has used it for similar work. There has to be some risk too of an unforeseen problem emerging when the bandsaw based approach is applied in practice.

Then there's the question of whether or not you'd be better to save for as somebody said a used planer rather than getting bumped into paying extra to make the bandsaw + whatever route work...

[Allan Speers]

Definitely not a bandsaw job.

however as others have said, it's always best to cut larger, then sneak up on the final dimensions later, with other tools. In that case, corss-cutting on a BS is fine, and safe. Owning a good shooting board system can really help with the final tweaking.

To make a precision, glue line cut, (with no further tweaking) a tablesaw with a sliding table (or a sliding miter platform like the Incra 3000, which costs much less & is much smaller) is the ultimate way to go.

Personally, if I'm in a hurry, hence trying for the final line with 1 cut, I use my tracksaw, with a 90 degree mitering adapter (Eurekazone) and a very good blade. (Carbide Processors) I have absolutely no need for a tablesaw. (Yes, I'm one of "those types.! ;) )



- but whether using a tablesaw, a tracksaw, or cutting wide then a shooting board, you still first have to have the 2 faces flat and evenly parallel to each other. Otherwise, you're pissing into the wind.

[Steven Fowler]

Alright here is what I have so far then.

Joint face and edge of board

Rip? Board to close enough thickness on bandsaw

Go buy a planer and plane the face of the board

Rip edge of board to desired width with bandsaw

I feel like the bandsaw will get me pretty darn close to glue up worthy on the edge. I'll do some more research. I know there is a lot of trouble with bandsaw drift and such but I think if it properly set up with a good blade it should have trouble rippling edgewise on board in a straight line.

If it doesn't based on what others are saying it looks like my options to finish that last edge is going to be a hand plane of some kind.

[Robert Engel]

Steve you're going to find out a bandsaw is no substitute for a table saw.
A BS is basically a small version of a sawmill.
Yes you can rip on a BS, but my experience the machine of choice for ripping accurately is the TS.

Just curious, why 2 big bandsaws?

[Steven Fowler]

Steve you're going to find out a bandsaw is no substitute for a table saw.
A BS is basically a small version of a sawmill.
Yes you can rip on a BS, but my experience the machine of choice for ripping accurately is the TS.

Just curious, why 2 big bandsaws?

My mistake I should have said OR. It looks like the grizzly table saw G1023RLW is roughly the same price as the bandsaw I am looking at but I looked for used and it is much easier to find a used tablesaw than a bandsaw in my area.

[Doug Hepler]

Dear Steven,

I have to chime in here with a minority report. My stationary power tool complement relevant to this issue is a Laguna 14-12 band saw (normally with a 3/4" blade), and a 13" planer. (I also have a drill press, and table-mounted router.) For 12 years, until last April, when we "downsized", I had a good TS, jointer, etc., so I have years of experience with a full complement of stationary power tools. I chose to change my style of work somewhat to accommodate the smaller shop.

I did spend a day getting the wheels on the band saw coplanar, adjusting the fence, and learning not to "horse" the work through the band saw. My routine is to rip with the band saw, and smooth/square the edge with a hand plane. If you are not already familiar with using hand planes, a good bench plane is expensive and may take a while to learn how to use properly (you can buy a fence for them). However, the Veritas Iron Edge Plane is inexpensive and works right out of the box. I think anybody can learn to use it. Actually, my band saw will shave a nearly paper thin cut off a 3/4" board and does not drift measurably over 24-36".

Before I had the planer, I used to square up stock with the jointer and/or hand planes. I only bought the planer when I had a lot of stock to work up in a garage workshop in Florida, in the summertime. I'm in my 70's and decided I was too old for flattening oak in the summertime.

The point is, Steven, if that's what you want to do, go for it. I do miss my TS occasionally but so far I have found workarounds if I just think a while.

Doug

[ian maybury]

Doug sounds like a very nice example of how bandsaws create differing realities for different users. Even a good example of a medium sized bandsaw used sensitively can be a very precise tool (in the straight rip context we're talking about) - or not if it's horsed or asked to make overly deep cuts in especially tough woods. While knowing what you are doing (or being a switched on new user) helps, bigger and heavier ones (especially when armed with a good carbide blade) tend to get commensurately less sensitve to issues that may lead to problems with getting a straight cut...

[mark mcfarlane]

FWIW, if I was starting a new shop with only 2 cutting tools, I'd go for a good tracksaw and a 12" planer. $2000 gets you a workable setup, e.g a Festool tracksaw and a Dewalt bench top planer. You can cut the live edge off a board and make it very straight with a tracksaw, and using a home-made sled with wedges (plenty of examples online) you can actually use a planner as a face jointer, then remove the sled, flip the board and thickness it.

If you are doing panel glue-ups and the tracksaw isn't making perfect joints (e.g. slightly off 90 degrees), you can glue up the two panels, resaw with the tracksaw along the glue line, and re-glue with a perfect match (because you are regluing the cut you just made, even if it is crooked or off of 90 degrees it is the same on both sides of the cut and they will go back together perfectly unless there is wiggle in your tracksaw).

Not answering your question, just another approach...

If your primary use of the bandsaw is to resaw 8/4 or 6/4 into thinner stock, you probably still need the bandsaw, but if you are mostly working with 4/4 lumber a tracksaw and a planner can go along way.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I think that you must have some way to "plane" the top. As Doug mentioned, you can use a hand plane. I own a planer, but not a jointer. I use a sled to make the first surface flat. I expect that a jointer would make that much easier, but I do not have room for one. A planer sled can be easy and cheap to make.