A Question for Flat Tired Bandsaw Owners

[Van Huskey]

Changing subjects, from your comment, it sounds like we might be over thinking and over discussing these machines in the eyes of the Italian manufacturers, and maybe we would give them a good laugh.
Thanks,
Edwin

We can always take hear in the fact the guy that wrote his master's thesis on bandsaw tracking spent a whole lot more time thinking about it!

[Erik Loza]

Erik - Would you comment on the question of running bands narrower than 1" in the center of the tire versus teeth overhanging the edge? One of the sub-questions in this thread is the risk of chewing up the tire when running a band in the center where where the teeth in the field of the tire.

My rule of thumb with flat/basically flat bandsaws is that if the blade is wider than 1/2”, hang the teeth off the front edge of the tire. This is only for tire life. A 1” skip-tooth blade will shred the tire if you run it in the middle of the wheel. A 1/2” or 1/4” blade, even though it might have alternating teeth, does not have enough kerf to really hurt the tire. One exception could be the blades like Lenox Tri-master or Resaw King (though I have never personally used that blade), where the teeth are brazed on but flat in kerf. I still track those off the front of the wheel but they “probably” would not chew up a tire like a regular blade would.

On the narrower blades, I run them in the center for the reason that thin blades on tall-resaw machines have a tendency to tug much more with the cut and possibly move more on the wheel.

One note and just my personal opinion. If you own a tall-resaw Euro machines larger than 16”/400mm or so and need to use a 1/4” blade on the regular, just get a 14” bandsaw and keep it set up for that. Save the Euro machine for big blades. Due to the huge span between the wheels on something like an MM20, it is REALLY tricky to get the tension just right with thin blades. Same reason you would own a router table as well as a shaper. Just my 2-cents.

Erik