My poor bandsaw

[Chris Merriam]

Just thought I'd share what I've done to my bandsaw :(

I have the Jet 14in deluxe bandsaw. It's my first BS and I've been running the cheap included blade with it until I have a better feel for what I'm doing with the tool.

I'm building a nightstand out of 1.5in hardmaple and needed to run the maple through the bandsaw. Well, the cheap blade was horrible, plus I think I stretched it out by leaving it tensioned too long (before I knew better). The blade chattered, burnt the wood, the drift angle was like 15 degrees, blade had too many teeth, etc, etc. Instead of ordering a nice blade, in the interest of time I ran over to the borg and bought their 1/2 blade.

Got it installed and couldn't tension it enough! I bottomed out the spring and didn't even have enough tension to keep it on the wheels. My first thought was I got a bum blade, so I exchanged it for another but had same problem.

Called Jet service and they said to loosen the nut at the bottom of the spring a couple turns (this raises the wheel). Tried it, no good, so I turned a few more and all of a sudden the nut froze up. It's like it got cross threaded in the middle of the tension rod. 3 hours later, I had completely taken apart the whole spring mechanism to get that nut off, it was a nightmare. I could get a wrench on the nut, but there was no way to prevent the entire rod from spinning with the nut. Now I need to get the threads on the tension rod, the spring nut, and two collars repaired, but that's not the worst part.

Since I moved the nut and 2 collars, I can't rebuild the spring assembly to the correct factory specs. Each of those three pieces needs to be in a certain spot on the tension rod for the tension gauge to read right. So the moral of my story is don't mess with your spring assembly unless you record the number of turns you make to the nuts, bolts, and collars!

Now for the good news, I called Jet this morning and they offered to send me a replacement assembly free of charge, even though I'm two months out of my warranty! I'm very impressed with their service and wanted to share that.

[John Brennaman]

Chris,

Thanks for the info on Jet customer service. I'm looking to purchase a shaper and am trying to narrow it down between Grizzly, Shop Fox, and Jet.

[Paul Simmel]

Methinks your borg blade was too long to begin with.

[Chris Merriam]

Paul, that's what I thought, and that's why I went back and got another one, but it was the same size as the first.

[Lee Schierer]

Sounds to me like you need to tune up your bandsaw. If you blade was wandering 15 degrees then there is something seriously wrong. The blade could be very dull and poorly tensioned, the blade guides may not be set properly or you are forcing the cut because the blade is dull or poorly tensioned.

I'm having problems with your statement that you stretched the blade. A piece of steel is like piece of elastic. A certain amount of tension will stretch it; however, it will spring back to the original size when the tension is removed unless you reach the yield point. If you reach the yield point, the blade will continue to strecth until failure occurs at the same level of tension (actually slightly less) until it breaks. It is doubtfull you could reach the yield point of any blade without either breaking the blade or bottoming out the tension spring since the steel has been hardened making the yield and failure points pretty close together.

With that said. Sawblades are pretty much what you pay for. Buying off the shelf blades at the local hardware may not give you the best cutting performance. I would suggest some of the better quality blades such as Timberwolf or Woodslicer might better suit your cutting needs.

However, without proper set up even the most expensive blade is not going to perform well. Do a complete tune up on your bandsaw. Make sure the guides, rollwers, wheels,etc are all properly aligned. On my Delta 14" I noticed some poor cutting performance and thought my blades was getting dull. What I found was that the bottom backup roller was frozen and not turning when the blade touched it. While fixing that I also discovered that the whole bottom blade guide was not fit together properly from day one from the factory. Some one had used a screw that was too long to properly tighten the guide rod in place and when tightened correctly the guide roller could actually touch some areas of the frame so it would bind up.

When I got the bottom guide assembly properly assembled and the roller freed up the blade cut like new with nearly zero drift when resawing 5-1/2" soft maple.

[Chris Merriam]

I think my setup is ok. Both upper and lower bearings turn fine. I have them set a hair behind the blade. Blocks are set right next to the blade, right behind the gullets.

I think my problem is tension and a dull blade, and I suspect my tension mechanism has been off all along from the factory and I never knew it. I checked to see if the blade deflects no more than 1/4 in, I guess it's borderline depending on how much force you use.

We'll see what happens when I get the new spring assembly I guess. It's so hard telling if your saw runs right when you have no experience to benchmark it with!

[Paul Simmel]

Chris,

I still think the blade was too long. Did you compare the factory blade to the new ones you purchased? According to Jet, you need 93.5”, but some other 14” BS’s use 92.5” – 93.5”. As I recall, when I had my 14” Griz some years ago, blades were not easy found off the shelf, though that may have changed now.

Maybe your tensioning mechanism was messed from the get go… and your wheel was to low. Just for peace of mind, I’d compare the original blade with the newer one. ½” difference will matter.

Good luck!

[Chris Merriam]

I held the blades next to each other, they looked close. Tonight I'll get out some string and measure for real. What did you do when you couldn't find a blade to fit your saw?

[Tyler Howell]

Stay away from Borg Blades.
Are your tires round and supple?
I'd replace the tensioning parts with some tricked out stuff from Lou Inturra:cool: .
Worked real slick for my Jet 14 with riser.

[Roy Wall]

Stay away from Borg Blades.
Are your tires round and supple?
I'd replace the tensioning parts with some tricked out stuff from Lou Inturra:cool: .
Worked real slick for my Jet 14 with riser.

Tyler is right!!
Google for Louis Iturra -- Iturra Designs. HE is in Florida.....and he knows EVERYTHING ABOUT THE JET 14" BANDSAW!

Open till 5 pm EST....call the man:cool:

[Pete Bradley]

The band that came with it is almost certainly junk, with the borg blade not far behind. When you're first getting started, you need a good band to eliminate that as a possible cause of problems. Call one of the usual suspects (e.g. Suffolk Machinery) and get yourself a 3/8"X4TPI and a 1/2"X3TPI thin-kerf band.

There's no way you could have stretched your band with the tension knob.

Not everyone believes that detensioning is necessary. I'm not going to get into that debate other than to say detensioning is not something you need to sweat about.

Tensioning is not what keeps the band on the wheels. Tracking adjustment is (assuming no other setup issues). Bottoming the spring won't help if the tracking is off.

There isn't a lot of rocket science to the tensioning assembly and the gauge is never that accurate anyway. Just get it back together and don't worry about it. The "flutter method" described on Suffolk's website is a good approach to getting tension right, and you'll soon develop a feel for tension so you'll rarely look at the gauge.

Iturra is the J. C. Whitney of the band saw world. If you want to customize, that's the place to go. To start though, I recommend you get a couple of decent bands and Duginske's band saw book, and decide on any add-ons witht the benefit of experience with the machine.

Good luck!

Pete

[CPeter James]

Lee is right on. Tension is a very small part of bandsaw set up, IMHO. The timberwolf people demonstrate their blades so loose that they hardy don't slip in the wheels. Get the blade so that it rides in the middle of both wheels. There is an adjustment that tips the top wheel to do this.

Buy good blades or better yet buy excellent blades. It saves in the long run. Cheap blades are not worth the time to put on unless you are sawing boards that have nailes or other junk in them.

CPeter

[Paul Simmel]

Chris, I ordered a cheap one from Grizzly for the 14” BS, which BTW, never had any kind of tracking issues… just horse power issues. I now have a Jet 18” saw with I believe a 137” band. FWIW, I have a 1.25” blade, and it was not expensive either (about $35.00). I have never had any problems with it. Both saws were/are used primarily for ripping and resawing.

The points above regarding the band possibly not running on the top/center of the wheels, is certainly something to verify and correct if found to be so. But I doubt your band would be so loose… ???

(>>> Got it installed and couldn't tension it enough! I bottomed out the spring and didn't even have enough tension to keep it on the wheels.)

[Barry Bruner]

You need to put a decent blade on it so you can figure out where to start. Barry Bruner

[Chris Merriam]

Thanks for all the replies. Tonight I went out and bought a tap and die kit and repaired the threads. Thankfully that worked great. I also went to my local woodworking store and bought a non-borg blade. Still not the top of the line stuff I know I need, but better than nothing.

Put the spring assembly back together with the settings as best as I could remember. The first time I didn't get enough tension to hold the blade on the wheel, went back and adjusted the spring, tried again and got nice tension.

Took my first ever cut with a 1/2 blade and it went like butter with 1-2 degrees of drift.

So it looks like my problem is solved (after 5 hours of tinkering and $40!!)

Thanks again for all the comments. I'll get some timberwolf blades soon.