Neanderthal's dirtly little secret.

[COWW]

Sorry, for a stealth Normite question in the Neanderthal Forum :

I'm getting ready to take the plunge. I'm going to sell my tablesaw and jointer. (I never use my jointer, and I rarely use the tablesaw)

As far as I can see, the one electron burning tool that does not have a good meat powered option is the Bandsaw (which I don't currently own). There just does not seem to be a another good option for re-sawing boards. I know people have built frame saws etc. and I've seen Shannon re-sawing a narrow board with a normal handsaw, but for any boards wider than 3-4" this just doesn't seem to be a good option. The last couple projects I've worked on I've needed some thinner boards (~1/2") and it just seems wasteful to thickness 4/4 stock to 1/2".

Hopefully this won't start any religious wars :

Any bandsaw recommendations for an aspiring knuckle dragger? At least what options should I look for in a bandsaw?

• 
  
  
• How often do most people really use the full 12" re-saw height of a larger bandsaw or 14" with riser block?
  
• How important is ease of changing blades?
  
• Do I need an aftermarket re-saw fence?
  
• How important is dust collection on a Bandsaw? I don't currently own a full-size dust collector as I don't really use my power tools much any more. I do have a festool CT22, is this sufficient for a bandsaw?
  

Thanks,

COWW

[wilburpan]

Any bandsaw recommendations for an aspiring knuckle dragger? At least what options should I look for in a bandsaw?

• 
  
  
• How often do most people really use the full 12" re-saw height of a larger bandsaw or 14" with riser block?
  
• How important is ease of changing blades?
  
• Do I need an aftermarket re-saw fence?
  
• How important is dust collection on a Bandsaw? I don't currently own a full-size dust collector as I don't really use my power tools much any more. I do have a festool CT22, is this sufficient for a bandsaw?
  

In general, bigger is better. A larger bandsaw takes up more vertical room than horizontal room, so unless you have low ceilings, you'll be able to accommodate a larger bandsaw than you might think.

Your questions in order:

1. A standard 14" bandsaw has 6" of resaw height. You'll run into boards wider than 6" more often than you think, and if your board exceeds the resaw capacity of your bandsaw, you're stuck. My bandsaw has 11" of resaw height, and I'm surprised how often I come close to using all of it.

2. Ease of changing blades is somewhat important. Get a 1/2" 3 tpi blade, and that will take care of 95% of your needs, so you won't be changing blades too often.

3. You don't need an aftermarket resaw fence, as long as you can attach a tall piece of plywood to the fence that you have.

4. Dust collection is extremely important on a bandsaw. It generates a lot of dust very quickly, and it is hard to corral it all. As good as a Festool CT22 is (I have one), I don't think it will be enough to keep up with a bandsaw.

Popular Woodworking and Fine Woodworking have had very nice things to say about the Grizzly 17" and 19" bandsaws. Used is also a good option. I bought my 1940's era 16" Walker Turner bandsaw from Craigslist, and I just love it.

[RenaissanceWW]

I don't use the full capacity resaw on my 14" all that often but I do very often use 1 or 2" wider than what would be possible without the riser block. The big problem I have is an underpowered motor, 1 HP, when trying to resaw wide stuff. I understand there was some contrary news to that coming out of WIA from Michael Fortune but I haven't hear and explanation on it. Maybe some of the WIA'er can chime in on that philosophy. Like Wilbur said, dust collection is a big deal because the spinning blade will fling dust every which way and make a nice cloud very quickly. Especially with resawing! I have an aftermarket fence and it is really nice, but no I don't really need it so I would put that off for a while. As far as blade changes go, think about how you would use the saw. If you are doing resawing or straight line stuff you will never need to change the blade. If you switch back and forth to tighter curve work then you may want to look at it. My Grizzly 14" could be easier but I change blades so rarely that it doesn't bother me.

[Bob Rozaieski]

I agree with Wilbur and Shannon. You want big and powerful.

I don't have or use any power tools in my woodworking (house carpentry is another story), but a bandsaw is one I very often wish I had. But not for the curved work, just for ripping 3-4" thick stock and resawing. The problem with these two tasks is that they require a large saw with a big motor, which usually means big $$$ and 220V power. If you don't have that available to you, or aren't willing to pay a qualified electrician to put it in, you're basically looking at a small saw with a riser block. While these saws can be used to resaw wide stock, doing so will stress a small motor considerably (these small saws are really made more for sawing curves in 1-2" thick stock, not resawing).

If I had the space and budget for a bandsaw myself, I'd be looking at something with at least a 12" resaw capacity (needed for sawing your own nice wide veneers) and at least a 2HP motor. Fancy gingerbread like microadjust fences and all that jazz really aren't important, so don't spend more for them. If you do all your other work by hand, it's not a big deal for you to freehand rip a board on the BS and clean it up with a plane. And most stock BS fences aren't worth spit for resawing, so you'd likely need to make a resaw fence anyway. I would just focus on getting the biggest resaw capacity and the largest motor you can aford.

[wilburpan]

Hi Shannon,

I went to Michael Fortune's talks at WIA, and also read the articles he wrote for FWW on bandsaw setup. I tried out his techniques with my bandsaw, and I can say that they work great. I was able to resaw a consistent 3/64" veneer from a 10" wide white oak board with a 1/2 HP motor and non-coplanar wheels without any problem.

This really doesn't belong in the Neanderthal Village, but here's the rundown on how Michael Fortune sets up a bandsaw. This presumes that your bandsaw wheels and/or tires have a crown on them.

1. Start with a 1/2" 3 tpi blade. Mount the blade, and adjust the top bandsaw wheel so that the blade is tracking dead center.

2. The tension should be on the low side. His rule of thumb is that you should be able to push the blade 1/4" without the tip of your finger turning white, and that even though he uses 1/2" blades for the majority of his cutting, the tension indicators are usually at the 3/8" mark. YMMV. I do think that loosening the tension on the bandsaw blade has made my bandsaw run smoother and with less strain, since there's not as much tension on the frame of the bandsaw, and Michael Fortune has said that he has seen bent axles and permanent bends in the spine of bandsaws from too much tension being placed on the bandsaw from overtensioning the blade.

3. Set your fence parallel with the miter slot.

4. Set the upper guides so that the guide blocks and thrust bearing are a cigarette paper's width away from the blade. This is thinner than the dollar bill that many people recommend for this task. The lower guides just need to be close.

5. Since the blade will be tracking perpendicular to wheels due to its centered position and the crown, you should have no drift at this point. If there is any drift, it's not because of the blade. It's because the table is misaligned to the wheels. Adjust the table if this is the case.

6. Adjusting the table is a big pain, but it's a one time setup. Once you finish doing this, you can deal with any "drift" simply by adjusting the upper bandsaw wheel. This is far easier than adjusting the fence, and as long as you track the blade in the center of the wheel, you'll be very close to a drift free position, if not already there. All you'll have to do to accomodate for drift is adjust the upper wheel, which is easier than testing and repositioning a bandsaw fence.

7. The big test is to take a piece of wood and use the fence to make a short cut. If the blade is centered in the kerf, you're good to go.

8. He is not concerned with how fast a resaw operation goes. His rule of thumb for resawing is that you shouldn't need more than two fingers of pressure on the board to feed it through the bandsaw. This is to prevent a poor quality cut by causing the gullets of the bandsaw blade to fill up with sawdust by feeding too fast. Whatever time is gained by pushing the board faster is lost by the extra time needed afterwards to clean up the surface of the board, so he would rather get a good quality flat cut to start with.

And as proof that the above steps all work, as part of his talk, he took an out of the box Asian-made Delta clone 14" bandsaw and set it up as he describes, resawed a piece of veneer, and passed it around so that we all could see what to expect with a well set up bandsaw for a resaw operation.

In his talk, he said that having a motor larger than 1/2 HP for a typical 14" bandsaw, even with a riser, was just not necessary. I think he phrased it this way partially to make an impact, but I think that his main point regarding motors is 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, you probably really have a problem with your blade or the way the bandsaw is set up. I'm not saying that it's not nicer to have a larger motor, but it's not a critical factor.

Furthermore, if you look at catalogs for 14-16" bandsaws from the 1940's-1950's, they all came with 1/2 HP motors, like mine did, and they all could be set up with a riser to make 12" resaw cuts. If a larger motor was really necessary, why weren't these bandsaws sold with 1-2 HP motors? I'm sure woodworkers back then used bandsaws to make resaw cuts the same way that we do now.

Where I do think a larger HP motor is useful is for larger bandsaws. Asking a 1/2 HP motor to turn 17-19" cast iron bandsaw wheels or to resaw more than 12" is probably a bit much.

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 his bandsaws don't have huge motors on them.

I know that there is another approach to bandsaw setup that involves high blade tension, coplanar wheels, setting up a fence to accommodate drift, and larger motors, and I'm not saying that you can't get good results that way. That is how I had my bandsaw set up before, except for the bigger motor and the coplanar wheels, since my bandsaw can't be adjusted that way, and I got good results then. I think, however, that Michael Fortune's approach to bandsaw setup is easier to manage, and will probably be the way I'll go from here on out.

[COWW]

Wilbur, Shannon, and Bob,

That is Awesome feedback, that is exactly what I was looking for.

My take-away is:

Bob, Shannon, Wilbur:

get a BS with at least 12 re-saw capacity, since this is the main reason I'm getting a BS.

Wilbur:

Huge power not necessarily needed for re-sawing if I follow the Michael Fortune Mantra.

So, I'm thinking probably one of the 14" 1.5-2hp BS with native 12" re-saw capacity.

Thanks Guys!

Chris

P.S. How cool is it to get power-tool buying advice from 3 guys who have blogs/podcasts that cater to Hand Tool enthusiasts!

[wilburpan]

P.S. How cool is it to get power-tool buying advice from 3 guys who have blogs/podcasts that cater to Hand Tool enthusiasts!

That is because Shannon and Bob know everything. In my case, I have no filter.

One last thing: if you are choosing between a 14" and a 17", both with 12" resaw capacity, go with the 17" bandsaw. Regardless of the discussion as to how much HP you need on a bandsaw, having the extra capacity between the throat and the blade is better to have, and the larger wheels will put less stress on the blade because the blade won't have to make as tight a curve around the larger wheel, which overall leads to a smoother running bandsaw as well.

[Bob Rozaieski]

That is because Shannon and Bob know everything.

Well, not in my case. I'm still learning every day. I just know and share how I do stuff and what works well for me .

Interesting that the 1/2 HP motor works ok for resawing. My experience with an old small BS was that the small motor struggled. But maybe that was due to incorrect setup, or feeding too fast on my part (a likely reason). When I had my old 18" Jet though, with the 2HP motor, 12" resaws didn't even make it sneeze, no matter what the feed rate. Sometimes I still regret selling that saw, until I remember the cloud of dust it spewed from every opening (it was probably a 20 year old saw, not one of the tight European styles that seem to be the norm today).

[Vic]

I have the Rikon 325 deluxe. It has a more powerful motor, but I don't believe you need it. I use Fortune's methods for resawing, also. I've set up my entire shop to work in 12" widths and can tell you his method works. You do not need to adjust for drift if you let the blade do it work of cutting and clearing the kerf. Now, if you are intent on cutting fast. Yes, you will need to have a more powerful motor, higher blade tension, adjust for drift, etc. You will probably still need to do more clean up after the cut, than I have had to do.

[jHop]

I don't have ceiling height to work with, so it's glad news to know I can get away with a smaller saw.

I tend to lean to the unplugged side because I don't have the space for power hogs... er... power tools. Still setting up the shop, mind. (got to get through piles of laundry first. don't ask.)

Back to one of the original questions: is there any alternative to a bandsaw for resawing? I realize coping and fret saws work for curves (on thinner stock), but what works on thicker? More cuts with plenty of relief cuts, and lots of sanding/scraping/planing afterwards?

[PaulMarcel]

I don't have ceiling height to work with, so it's glad news to know I can get away with a smaller saw.

I tend to lean to the unplugged side because I don't have the space for power hogs... er... power tools. Still setting up the shop, mind. (got to get through piles of laundry first. don't ask.)

Back to one of the original questions: is there any alternative to a bandsaw for resawing? I realize coping and fret saws work for curves (on thinner stock), but what works on thicker? More cuts with plenty of relief cuts, and lots of sanding/scraping/planing afterwards?

In Toshio Odate's book on Shoji, the first chapter is about traditional Japanese tools. There's a picture of him resawing a 3/4" thick board with a Japanese pull saw (10"x36" IIRC). Dude's amazing.

[Bob Rozaieski]

Back to one of the original questions: is there any alternative to a bandsaw for resawing? I realize coping and fret saws work for curves (on thinner stock), but what works on thicker? More cuts with plenty of relief cuts, and lots of sanding/scraping/planing afterwards?

For 6" wide or narrower stock I just use my 5 point rip saw. I find it is the easiest saw to control for the task. For anything over that, if you want to get all historical (no shame in it, I do it all the time ), the tool of choice would have been a 2-man frame saw. The problem is, those saws are really hard to control, especially by yourself. They really require 2 good sawyers. Here's an idea of what one would have looked like and how it would have been used.

These saws are obviously not made anymore so you'd have to make your own. The problem is finding a blade. Bandsaw blades do not work well. Believe me, I've tried...several times. I've made several saws using bandsaw blade stock. The bandsaw blade just isn't the best blade for hand sawing. Bandsaw blades, even the 1½" wide ones, are just too narrow to track straight for 100% hand resawing. I consider myself a pretty decent sawyer, and I couldn't control those saws at all. The blade just wasn't right.

In addition, the teeth on a bandsaw blade are shaped all wrong for hand sawing. The tooth design of a bandsaw blade is fine for a saw that tracks straight on bearings, and is driven by a very powerful motor, but for hand power, they're not so great. The hook tooth pattern is really too aggressive for a hand saw, and since the toothline is typically hardened, they can't be easily refiled or reshaped. There's also way too much set, so the blade rattles around in the kerf too much when using them for hand sawing. The blades work fine on a bandsaw tuned to track straight, but it's not possible to move the saw in a bandsaw straight line by hand. There will always be some side to side variation.

So if you have your heart set on doing it the hard way, you're left with making your own saw blade, about 4-5" wide , 4 feet long, and about 2-3TPI. I've made several of my own saws, but I'm not all that excited about the prospect of making one so long with such large teeth. I'd still like to try making one myself someday, but I'm not all that motivated to do so at the moment. I don't have a need to do a lot of resawing right now.

I've had some discussions with folks much more knowledgable than me on the historical aspect of the craft, and their feeling is that resawing is not something most shops did a lot of in house. Many shops would have a large frame saw like the one pictured for occasional resawing or ripping of very thick stock (basically what resawing is), but if a significant amount of resawing was required, the shop would likely have had the job done by the mill/pitsawyer, who would have the right saw and the right skills to do the job effeciently and accurately.

So while I'm all for doing things the environmentally friendly way as often as possible, for most home shops, the bandsaw really is the right tool for resawing. Think of it as your own personal pitsawyer .

But don't let me talk you out of trying it by hand either. I think anyone serious about using hand tools should try it at least once, just to have the experience. I still do it by hand because I don't currently have any other choice. My two current projects really have me rethinking that though.

[jHop]

For 6" wide or narrower stock I just use my 5 point rip saw. I find it is the easiest saw to control for the task. For anything over that, if you want to get all historical (no shame in it, I do it all the time ), the tool of choice would have been a 2-man frame saw. The problem is, those saws are really hard to control, especially by yourself.

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But don't let me talk you out of trying it by hand either. I think anyone serious about using hand tools should try it at least once, just to have the experience. I still do it by hand because I don't currently have any other choice. My two current projects really have me rethinking that though.

I really appreciate this information. The reason i was asking was that I have clearance issues in the basement shop. Most of the ceiling is exposed rafters, but there are some ducts and support beams that are under the rafters in a few areas, including where I'm setting up the shop. These drop the available space down to as little as 5'6". The house is over 100 years old, and was clearly never built to have a wood shop in the basement. I even took over the old coal storage room as my initial workshop, and converted it to storage and moved the few tools I have to the other side of that wall. So I'm checking alternatives before purchasing any bandsaws. (I'm trying to stay away from the benchtop version, as I don't think it will have the capacity I'm looking for.)

So now I have a better understanding of what the process by hand is, and can make a more informed decision. Thank you very much! (I will be copying that photo in a bit for further study. Where did you find it?)

[Bob Rozaieski]

(I will be copying that photo in a bit for further study. Where did you find it?)

The plate is from André Jacob Roubo's volumes on L'Art du Menuisier from 1769. There are several excerpts of images online, but very little in textual form to be found, at least without going to the libraries of the Smithsonian, or perhaps the Winterthur library. It's not a commonly found set of books in the US, even though it is commonly referenced ever since Chris Schwarz built his first version of one of Roubo's workbenches. Even if you could find it, it is unlikely you could read it unless you are fluent in 18th century French . I'm not, so I just study the pretty pictures and try to discern whatever I can from them. I think the toolemera web site might have a selection of Roubo's plates. I forget where else I was able to find them. Definitely worth seeking out as there's lots of cool stuff in Roubo's volumes. Wish I had a set, even if they were in French. I can't wait for the translations of the volumens to come out.