I've seen the post and I've seen advertisements about the blades. Without doing some serious searching I would have to say that they only work on large wheeled machines (18" comes to mind) and maybe only certain models that are designed for them with capacity to take 1" blades and up for resawing. If you had a machine with that capacity and have a check book that wouldn't be running out of funds for $200 blades it might be worth the time to really look into it. A bit out of my league (a bit out of my depth).
Ed
{Knight of the Shopsmith} [Hero's don't wear capes, they wear dog tags]
charlese wrote:No I don't, but since you aren't getting a lot of suggestions - thought I'd write something.
I'm thinking of a hand saw cutting a thru dovetail. You got that kind of cut with the un-tensioned blade. Obviously the speed of the blade together with the feed rate were perfect.
I think the question is really about the tensioned blade. What made the tensioned blade give an un-smooth cut. - - Are the blade guide blocks square? Was the speed too fast? I think (and that's just a hunch) that a fast moving blade may tend to set up a harmonic type vibration that might have caused the difference.
I've found that most of my short, straight cuts with the band saw are pretty darned smooth. Wavy cuts only happen with extended lines and curves, on 3/4" boards. There are saw blade marks on re-saws however. I usually run on speed A + , or almost B.
Charlese
Speed may be the factor, with the blade untensioned it did slow down, in fact that is how I determined something was wrong. However after tensioning the blade I had the saw speed set on the slowest position as I wanted to see if I had damaged anything. I finished my cuts at that position.
I was using a fence and with the blade untensioned I noticed the smooth cut and thought boy I'm going to use this fence more often. At about that time I noticed the blade was slowing down and I began to wonder what was going on. I then remembered I hadn't tensioned it. I quickly shut the machine off and tensioned it. I turned it back on and made sure the speed was on the slowest and started my cut. At that time I noticed the blade doing the usual band saw blade number on the cut. All my cuts were only 1-2 inches in 3/4 inch maple as I was notching shelves to go into a cabinet. I made about one or two notches with the untensioned blade and a half dozen with the blade tensioned. There is a noticable difference in cut quality, which to me is bewildering. I would have thought the untensioned cuts would be all over the place as the blade could flop around instead they were near perfect.
I guess I need to experiment but it seems like a risky thing to do, however it may point to something wrong in my bandsaw that I have overlooked.
reible wrote:I've seen the post and I've seen advertisements about the blades. Without doing some serious searching I would have to say that they only work on large wheeled machines (18" comes to mind) and maybe only certain models that are designed for them with capacity to take 1" blades and up for resawing. If you had a machine with that capacity and have a check book that wouldn't be running out of funds for $200 blades it might be worth the time to really look into it. A bit out of my league (a bit out of my depth).
Ed
Hi Ed,
I do have a 20" bandsaw...... $200 is a lot of money...... I will have to think about that. In the meantime, I will try to find out if they will work on my saw. Thank you for your input.
Tim
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