Recently bought a new Rikon 10-347 bandsaw that they claim is professional grade. It is obviously strongly built and claims to be able to handle a 1 1/4 in blade. I stumbled across a Lennox Trimaster 1” blade, 3tpi, 1/32” Kerf blade in my length for $83 on Amazon. Brand new, so I had to buy it. Today I put it on the saw and tensioned it up and made a couple of resaw cuts and they looked great.
What I don’t know never having had a saw this big nor a blade that thick is how to know if the tension is correct. The finger flex test shows minimal give, no quarter inch of movement and the becoming solid, just solid,period. The tension release is very difficult to engage requiring both arms. The inside tension gage only reads 7/8 inch yet to tension it any tighter requires lots of effort, don’t think I can twist the wheel that much more. Makes me believe it could be overtensioned. My question short of spending money I don’t want to spend for a tension gage is what do those of you with large saws and thick blades do to correctly tension your blades? Does the flutter test work on big blades? Or is it just cut and evaluate the results?