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[elwoodblues]

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[gardnesd]

Good question. I would guess yes. It's like having your car geared properly for the task at hand. You probably are more efficient resawing and less efficient with other tasks.

[Guest Trace]

Usually when a motor gets too warm, it is due to either too much load or not enough amperage to run properly. Basicly the same thing. A 7 amp, 110 volt motor will pull only 7 amps under perfect conditions. If it is running a table saw, and being pushed hard, it will draw up to 10 or 12 amps, which causes the heat to build up. If the saw is being run using an extension cord of 14 awg, this also can cause heat build up, and possibly a melt down of the cord. A higher HP motor will work less hard and will pull more amps, but will stay cooler. Although a 110 volt motor will work well, it helps to have dedicated circuts and enough electric service (200 amps) for the shop. Not enough electric service will shorten the life of a 110 volt motor, and a 220 volt motor also. If I were to go to larger motors they would be 220 volt, three phase, but only for the table saw. Another heat builder is having a pulley ratio which is too close to 1 : 1. A smaller pulley on the motor driving a larger pulley, results in more power to the driven shaft, but at a lower rpm. I probably not telling you anything you don't already know, but maybe I touched on a point or two that may help. Good luck.

[wilburpan]

Although in general larger motors are always nicer, just to throw another angle at this issue, I was at Woodworking in America, and even though I tend towards hand tool work, the most informative sessions for me was listening to Michael Fortune talk about setting up bandsaws. Besides the talk, there were bandsaws there that we could try out to put into practice the information that he covered.

One of the things that he said was that for your typical 14" Delta-type bandsaw, you didn't need a motor more than 1/2 HP, which is a topic that I had raised recently. He also said that you could do resawing on such a bandsaw with such a motor up to the 12" or so capacity that a 14" bandsaw has with a riser.

Just in case you didn't know, Michael Fortune is a professional woodworker, and uses bandsaws extensively in his shop in a commercial environment. It seems that he uses bandsaws for many operations that most people would use a table saw for: making tenons, ripping hardwood, and so on. And although he stated this point along the lines of, "No one needs more than a 1/2 HP motor," I think his main point was that for a typical home workshop, a lot of work can be done with a bandsaw with a modestly sized motor, and that if you think you need a bigger motor for your bandsaw, you probably really have a problem with your blade or the way the bandsaw is set up.

Still, enjoy your new motor! Whether or not you need the extra HP, if you can score a Baldor motor for $50, that's a deal to be proud of.

[Vic]

Well said, Wilbur. I wont even get into the problems with oversizing motors. But, typically, 1/2 to 1HP should be plenty for resawing. Let the blade do the work.

[wilburpan]

I have pretty good patience with everything else, except for resawing. Maybe the 3/4 motor I was using before was just one hickory resaw away from meeting its maker (although I doubt I would have shipped her to Taiwan). While I agree that you can do resawing on a 1/2 horse motor, and maybe it is my intermediate/novice experience to woodworking, but why would you take the stairs when there is an elevator available?

I asked Michael Fortune about this issue at WIA. His view is that although a larger HP motor might allow you to feed the stock faster for a resaw operation, by feeding it faster you'll wind up with a poorer quality surface, which will have to be fixed by planing, scraping, or sanding. So whatever time savings you gain from the bigger HP motor gets lost in the additional time spent for surface prep, and he would rather spend more time getting the cut right than spending extra time processing the board. Again, Michael Fortune uses bandsaws in a commercial environment for his furniture making business, so I am sure he is very aware of the time issue as far as bandsaw use goes.

Over the weekend I spent some time resawing a 9" wide cherry board. Although I didn't have a stopwatch handy, I would guess that it was taking me less than a minute to resaw a board 18" long with my bandsaw that has a 1/2 HP motor. If that's the amount of time it takes to do that operation, I'm not sure how much time can actually be saved by getting a larger motor. 15 seconds? 30 seconds? I'll lose that amount of time easily when I am futzing about on my workbench wondering where I put my 4" square.

One other tip from Michael Fortune that really helped me: he said that resawing is a 2 finger operation. If you are pushing the wood harder than what you can with two fingers on the end of the board, you're probably feeding the wood too fast. I've noticed a marked improvement in my resawing since I started doing this -- better surface, no more burning, no issues with barrelling of the blade.

[Vic]

Boy you guys know how to make a guy feel guilty about a more powerful motor...

but man will it cruise.

Still, feed it slow if you are resawing. Feeding slow enough for the blade to clear the debris in the kerf allows the blade to do it's work and will keep you from a lot of finish work. That's why I was saying that in the resaw function drift is not an issue if your fence is parallel to the blade. If you DO push the wood through vs letting the blade work, you will need to adjust for drift. I don't adjust for drift and get very smooth cuts.

[wilburpan]

Boy you guys know how to make a guy feel guilty about a more powerful motor...

Like I said, getting a Baldor motor for $50 is quite the deal. I just wanted to put the bandsaw thing in perspective so that if one day you might come across another need for that 2 HP motor, you won't go nuts trying to find a big HP motor for your bandsaw.