Resawing on a bandsaw? Question on magnetic fence and Carter F A S T guide

[Doug Garson]

What's the basket of laundry for? Just kidding looks like a good setup.

[Lee Schierer]

I also have the Kreg fence on my 14" band saw. I no longer have to monkey with it every time I want to resaw.

I would suggest that before you spend money and time making new fences try this test. Find a piece of scrap wood about 15 or so inches long and at least 2" wide. Place your Kreg fence so you are making a rip cut at least 1 inch from the fence. Start your rip cut and stop when you are about half way through the cut and turn off the saw. Once the saw stops, let go of the board. If it is pinched toward the fence or pulls away from your fence you saw is not properly aligned. You can find out how to align your band saw with this video.

Follow the instructions in the video an you will soon have a band saw that is much more cooperative making rip cuts and resawing. I used to struggle when resawing on my band saw until I made the adjustment to the table and made the fence parallel to the miter slot and blade.

[Jim Dwight]

I have owned a quality bandsaw for less than a month. So I am no expert. I used to use a home made one. I followed Alex Snodgrasses setup advice as well as the Jet manual. I put on my 1/2 inch 3 or 4 hook teeth per inch blade. Just to try it out, I ripped several pieces of softwood veneer about 1/8 thick by about 6 inches tall. Works great.

Alex has you set the table parallel to the blade after you track the blade to ride in the middle of the top wheel (ignore the bottom) and adjust the guides to be almost but not quite touching the blade. The rip fence of my Jet locks only at the front but it does have a nice tall design that I also set perpendicular to the table.

My limited experience suggests that a correctly set up saw with a decent blade will do what you want to do. My old saw would not but it wouldn't correctly tension a 1/2 inch blade. Alex cuts a veneer off a piece of walnut about a foot wide with a 3/8 blade in one of his videos, however. Seems more important to get the tension right than the width of the blade. Some of my difficulty with my old saw was undoubtedly me.