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Band Saw Blues. Bad blade, or pilot error?

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 12:29 am
by DapperDanMan
Recently bought this bandsaw, and put a new blade on. Follwed the setup and adjustment procedures in the owners manual. The blade is a 6 tpi x 1/2", bought off Amazon. Saw is correctly set up and tensioned.

Saw blade: https://a.co/d/jfUDP30

I needed to rip a piece of T&G spruce 2x6 for a porch roof I'm building.

The rip is at a 22.5 degree angle, so I set up a fence and jig to help guide my cut. The jig is a short piece of stock which I clamped to the table.

I made test cut with a short board with no problem, though I was surprised by how slowly it cut.

The rip I needed was about 16" of a ten foot board.

The cut went very slowly for a few inches, then the blade began to bind badly and slow, several times. It smoked as well. I stopped cutting about 12" in and finished with a handsaw, because it wouldn't cut further.

As you can see, the cut face is pretty flat. A bit curved, but not much. The saw left a lot of marks as well.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bad blade? Something else?

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Re: Band Saw Blues. Bad blade, or pilot error?

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 2:17 am
by edma194
Are the teeth pointing down? Probably so or it wouldn't cut at all.
Very easy to bind the blade at that angle. You should use a feather board for the secondary fence and have it end just before the blade like the fence attached to the miter gauge.

Re: Band Saw Blues. Bad blade, or pilot error?

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 7:58 am
by larryhrockisland
If you had needed to set your fence for drift, would tilting the table change that and cause binding? I can see where controlling a 10’ 2x6 on a beveled table could be difficult too.

Re: Band Saw Blues. Bad blade, or pilot error?

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 9:09 am
by jsburger
6 TPI is way too fine for that cut. It is essentially a re-saw cut. The blade should be 3-4 TPI.

Re: Band Saw Blues. Bad blade, or pilot error?

Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 11:17 am
by BuckeyeDennis
I agree with all of the suggestions above.

I've made similar cuts successfully on my Shopsmith bandsaw. But given that the bandsaw table isn't deep enough to properly control a long board, I used roller stands for both infeed and outfeed support. You're not making a long cut, so you should only need the infeed support. That will prevent the board from pitching up or down when feeding. Given the tilted cut, any workpiece pitching would create lateral pressure against the blade.