You have the patience of a saint if you actually read all this but I thank you profusely for whatever help you can provide.
I have a Jet JWBS-18 bandsaw with a 1-1/2 HP motor. It's primarily used for resawing boards from 3-9" wide. Most woods are African or South American in origin.
Blades used are Lenox Woodmaster CT (1", 1.3TPI), Resaw King and the newest addition is Lenox Tri-Master (1-1/4" 3TPI).
The Woodmaster CT resawed a bunch of 8/4 sapele with pretty good results. When I tried resawing pecky Bolivian walnut, it couldn't handle it. So I bought the Resaw King and was able to resaw up to 9" wide PBW. Maybe 100' linear feet. Since then I have used it occasionally for smaller work.
Next resaw was zebrawood. For a neighbor. After the Resaw King failed to track, I reluctantly installed the brand new Tri-Master. After painstakingly setting it up, I ran a 48"Lx8"W piece of 8/4 to 1/4" thickness. Perfect! So we set up to resaw two 8/4 zebrawood boards. One was 6-1/2" wide, the other 8-1/2" wide. Both were about 9' long. Both had been jointed on two faces. The cut was set for a final 1/2" thickness.
It started off fine. Then the 20A breaker tripped. So I told my neighbor to slow the feed rate. I was keeping the wood pressed to the 6" tall fence while he pushed. Twice more the breaker tripped and both times we again slowed the feed rate.
On the last two cuts, blade drift started up. It got pretty bad so we had to flip the boards to finish up.
Past experience tells me blade drift is caused by a dull blade, too fast a feed rate, too shallow of a gullet or a poorly aligned fence. I have the Laguna Driftmaster fence, which I have found to be unnecessary, but even incorporating those features of the fence didn't stop the drift.
BTW, the dust collector drum was filled with a fine dust. The Tri-Master wasn't acting like a rip blade but rather finely removing the wood.
So I'm wondering why these carbide tipped blades seem to fail so quickly? Is the motor under powered? Are the blades not designed to handle these woods at these thicknesses? Do we have to slow feed rates to a snail's pace? It takes a LOT of pressure to feed the wood as it is.
Thoughts?