Bandsaw resaw blade question?

Re: Bandsaw resaw blade question?

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If I just want to get something slabbed I have the saw shop weld up the same blade as used on the portable band saw mills. Cuts heavy stock quickly, dry or green.

Lenox Woodmaster CT 1" carbide

Re: Bandsaw resaw blade question?

John K Jordan

It can depend on how stout the bandsaw is. If it will handle and properly tension a wide blade there are more options.

Lately I've been using a 1/2"x3 tpi carbide Lenox blade for my 18" Rikon. Some people prefer 1" or wider blade for dedicated resaw.

JKJ

Re: Bandsaw resaw blade question?

Hank Knight

I have a 1" Laguna Resew King on my bandsaw. It's the best resaw blade I've ever used. It gives an almost perfectly smooth cut. They are expensive, but worth it if you do a lot of resewing. They are carbide tipped and can be resharpened. I used to use Woodslicers from Highland Woodworking. I liked them, but they didn't last long. The Woodslicer can't compare with the Resaw King for smooth cuts or durability.

Re: Bandsaw resaw blade question?

Dick Coers

Used to go to a place that made blades for portable sawmills. Used a 3/4" wide with 3 teeth per inch. Only about $15 each. Didn't last long, but could buy a lot for the cost of one carbide. Then I started making my own blades and find rolls of that kind of blade stock on eBay and get by even cheaper.

Lenox Tri-Master

David Yoho

I use a Lenox Tri-Master carbide tipped blade on my Mini Max saw. It's 1" wide and yields very smooth results when re-sawing. It's not inexpensive but I've been using it probably over 15 years and it still cuts great.

answers skewed to smooth cuts

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

If the objective is to slice veneer it could make sense to invest, and invest it will be on the saw you are talking about, in carbide. I have seen veneer sliced with the Lenox that was ready for application right of the saw. When slicing valuable stock the lower waste can pay for the blade.

But if the objective is to turn 5/4 lumber, or riven billets, into drawer sides the desirability of carbide becomes less certain. For these tasks I use the "saw mill" blade described previously. They cost less than $15 for my 20" saw. When I recently split 3 roofing nails re-sawing some cherry I was out $15. Also this blade cuts rapidly in these rip cuts which is no surprise considering the tooth is designed for sawing logs.

Tooth marks clean up with 1/32" pass through the planer.

I agree with Bill,

Keith Newton

I don't recall seeing any mention of your blade length, so I have no way of choosing a blade for you. However, whatever blade you choose should not have more than 1 TPI. If the saw still has the stock motor, I believe I've read that they are a bit underpowered, so fewer teeth would allow faster feed. Blades last longer if each tooth can take larger chips. Larger chips take the heat out with it, whereas having to feed slower while making finer dust allows heat buildup that dulls the blades quicker.

Re: I agree with Bill,

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

I have read glowing reports of the Hitachi as a resaw bandsaw. A friend who is a high end designer/maker has one. I do not recall the blade he uses, but I have a visual memory of something in the region of 2". Can that be so?

The Lenox Woodmaster CT 1" is 1.3 tpi. I've used the heck out this blade for about 3 or 4 years now, and sharpened it myself a few times. It leaves a surface that is very good, but does still need planing. The strength of this blade is that it cuts fairly fast. Some blades can produce a better finish, but they are slower. This is a good compromise. The down side is that it needs a saw frame that can handle a lot of downforce. I use it on a Hammer N4400 (17 1/2" machine). I believe that the Hitachi can take it. If not, one alternative is a Laguna Resaw King. They do, however, have a bit of a reputation for snapping. The strength of the Lenox is that is is built like a tank (hence the downforce issue).

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: answers skewed to smooth cuts

Barry Irby

The sawmill blade is seriously tempting.

I spent some time this morning fiddling with the saw. The Stellite blade that came with it was missing a tooth. It seems odd to me but only every other tooth has the Stellite on it. I smoothed up the mangles tooth and then carefully went of the blade. I set a thin piece of wood clamped to the table so that it would just snick the side of the tooth. Turning the wheel backwards by hand I found several teeth out of alignment. I very gently bent them back into position. Did this from both sides. I brushed several with a diamond plate from the sides as well. I also adjusted the blade back on the wheel as much as I could, but all of this did not cancel the drift. I adjusted the phenolic guides. (Phenolic stinks when it rubs)

To compensate for the drift I made a fence that was tapered enough to get it to be parallel to the cut. It seems successful.

Thank you for your suggestions. I appreciate your experience. And you are right about the investment in Carbide.

Re: I agree with Bill,

Barry Irby

Keith, the blade is 111" and the Stellite blade I have is 1 TPI and very close to 3" wide. I my response to Bill I explained fiddling with the blade and getting it to work better.

I am seriously tempted to get one of the top line carbide blades but I find the price stunning. And It was not clear they make them in custom lengths, but I am sure they do. Some have variable tooth spacing and multiple tpi. At m age I see this as a lifetime blade and Don't want to get the wrong one.

Derek....

Barry Irby

The saw I have can run a blade up to 3" wide. I don't have the manual for it but apparently to go to a narrower blade I should install a different set of guides. I have some carter guides that go under the table but they cam't be sued with the wide Stellie blade. (I think)

I would like to know what blade your friend is running.

My saw still has the original motor Which has brushes, runs on 120 volts/15 amps and howls like a banshee. It is underpowered by modern standards, but is I can get it to cut straight and smooth that won't bother me much. I am not a production operation so a few extra minutes won't matter much.

I want to be able to go to the saw, set the fence, make a few cuts and walk away and not have to change the blade back and forth from cutting curves and bowl blanks.

Thanks for the help.

Re: Bandsaw resaw blade question?

jcousins

last several years i have used a 1"" laguna resaw king - not cheap - but can be sharpened at least 2x's.

jerry

Re: I agree with Bill,

Keith Newton

Well, besides the recommendation of no more than 1 tpi, if you choose a carbide, just note the gullet depth. Most of the carbide blades you will find on the market are for cutting steel, and just don't have enough gullet to carry all the chip material out when resawing wide boards. If the gullet gets full half way down the depth of the cut, then that wad of material is keeping the blade from advancing, as well as generating a lot of heat. As I'm sure you know this heat isn't good for the health of your expensive blade. I don't think that it's actually the heat that does the harm, but the chemicals in the wood turning to steam erodes the binder within the carbide. At least I think that is what I read many years ago. Maybe some of the chemist on this site can study up and get to the bottom of it. I recall having a discussion with a machinist friend that said to me that heat wasn't an issue for carbide, that it was just as hard when red hot as when cool. He said that it actually could benefit like a hot knife through butter. I told him I'm pretty sure that isn't how it works in wood.

Looking at the blade cleaning discussion running right now, the warnings against leaving in the bath too long probably isn't any different than acids in the wood turning to steam when there is too much heat in the cut.

Also, since you are dedicating this for resaw, you really want a positive hook angle to chisel through this dead against the grain attack. If you choose a metal type, it most likely will have 0º which is a scrape cut, that will waste more power and generate more heat.

Re: I agree with Bill,

Barry Irby

Keith, I appreciate your response.

I just contacted WoodMizer and wanted to get some technical advice on this. The Lady that returned my call suggest a standard double hard steel blade with at 9*. I had been fishing around in their website and seen their 12* carbide tipped blades and asked about those. She hemmed and hawed a bit and said the 9* blades were general purpose and she did not know what the 12* ones were for. The Steel blades are 1 1/4" and .042". The carbide blade is also 1 1/4" but only .035" thick. I can buy 4 steel blades for the price of one carbide ($89).

Unfortunately I was at lunch in a noisy place and did not feel like yelling my business all over the place and also got the feeling the Lady did not have the answers and was just looking in a book.

If the carbide blade cuts smoother I am inclined to try one.

Re: I agree with Bill,

Keith Newton

That sounds like a good choice to me. I've only used the steel blades from Woodmizer, but feel like they are great for the price. And you know that since they are made for their mills, there will be plenty gullet for your needs.

They also have a good sharpening service, so you can send it back to them if you ever need that done.

I don't recall you saying, did it come with a power feeder? Whether it did or not, don't let the screaming motor fool you into feeding too slowly. If you don't hear in reduction in the RPM's and you are making dust rather than chips, you are likely feeding too slow. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that you or anyone bog the motor down to overload, but listen to your tools and let them do the work they are meant to do.

Keith, to be clear.....

Barry Irby

Are you suggesting the steel blade?

My rational brain tells me that a blade that will last a "while" on a WoodMizer would last me a LONG time. Both terms being relative. I heard someone say a Wood Mizer blade is good for about 500 feet. Not sure if that's board feet or linear feet. Either way, if sawing air dried wood cut that in half even, that would be fine for me. As $21 a blade that's about ten cents a foot. And if I get the full 500 it's about a nickle. At a hobby level a couple of blades would last a lifetime. At least as much of a lifetime as I have left.

But, the "My saw is better than your saw" part of my brain wants the carbide teeth. I'm trying to rationalize. Smoother cut? Thinner kerf? Don't care? Get one of each and compare?

NO, Are you suggesting the steel blade?

Re: Kerf Width

Hank Knight

Barry, Don't automatically assume carbide tipped blades have a wide kerf. I have a 1" steel log blade I use for heavy rough cutting. I used it for resawing before I got my carbide-tipped Laguna Resew King. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Resew King's kerf is only about 2/3 as wide as the log blade. It is a very thin blade and the carbide tips are tiny.

Woodmizer blades

John K Jordan

>>>I heard someone say a Wood Mizer blade is good for about 500 feet. Not sure if that's board feet or linear feet.

I have had a Woodmizer sawmill for over a decade and so far have only used blades directly from Woodmizer. The 500' life doesn't make sense to me. 500 linear feet could be as little as two 10' long 28" diameter logs sliced into 4/4 boards which would be useless to me. The type of wood makes a difference - cutting Cedar or Osage Orange?

What makes the biggest difference is dirt in the bark, the reason the big boys debark the entire log or have a debarker attachment cut a kerf in front of the saw blade. This should not be a problem for resawing in the shop. Also, like other cutting tools how long do you want to continue to cut when the blade gets "a little bit" dull?

For resawing, a huge consideration is how smooth you want the board, maybe discussed here (I didn't read it all). The Woodmizer blades less than 1 tooth/inch and are engineered to cut through 30" thick green wood so the resulting surface is rough, of course. You might have to run each resawn board through the planer and remove 1/8" or so on each side. Also, the blade itself is thicker and cuts a wider kerf than any blade I use on my shop bandsaw.

I usually use 1/2" 3 tpi steel Lenox blades on my 18" shop bandsaw and they work fine for both wet and dry wood up to the limit of the saw, just over 12".

That said, I recently bought a 1/2" 3 tpi Lenox Diamaster 2 carbide toothed blade (hook tooth) for my shop bandsaw. It cost me about 10 times as much as the cheap steel blades but they claim it will last 40 times as long. The cut is not as smooth as some get from wider blades on better saws but so far I'm quite happy with it for what I do. Ask in a few months if you want to know my longer-term impression.

JKJ

misprint? not 1/8"

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

"You might have to run each resawn board through the planer and remove 1/8" or so on each side." must be a misprint or your saw is seriously out of adjustment. less than 1/32" in my experience off my band saw and about 1/32 off well milled commercial lumber sawed on a band mill. If the blade on a commercial mill is not damaged the cut is as smooth as what I get on my band saw. However, often there is damage and there will be a repetitive irregularity where a tooth or teeth are deflected.

Misenheimer saw shop in Morristown welds band mill blades from stock coils. They are sharpened alternate bevel and a raker (1 1/4 x 1.5 tpi I think). I use them on my 20" Delta band saw for resawing all but expensive veneers. For example, I cut billets from a huge poplar and resawed dozens of quartered drawer side stock from them. Or, I am resawing 15 cherry boards to make thinner stock for the back of the corner cabinet and then veneer to do the shelves.

I am more interested in quickly making these cuts than saving a few thousandths of an inch of wood per cut. Because these blades are designed for ripping they rip quickly and they rip straight. Tracking well is way more important than tooth marks.

When resawing it is not only the saw tooth marks that need to be cleaned up, it is any irregularity in the saw track. In my experience it is common to need to straighten a cut from a blade that doesn't track through the wood well and this straightening removes WAY more material than what is needed to remove tooth marks. For this reason I long ago quit using the common 3/4 x 3 tpi blades people use for resawing.

The optimum carbide blade for my 20" Delta costs over $200. I have hit enough stuff that there is significant risk that the life of this blade will be determined by hitting something rather than dulling. A blade from Misenheimer is less than $15. Do the math. The band mill blades cut quick and 1/32" removes tooth marks which are in fact not this deep. By upping the teeth to 1" x 2tpi I get a cut where 80 grit sand paper removes tooth marks, but with a slower cut that takes more care to track true.

I got a lesson in how well the band mill blade tracked when sawing the triangular stack of shelves for the corner cupboard. I free-hand sawed the stack of triangles on the band saw. Once I started a cut it effortlessly kept going in a straight line. It was easy to just kiss my pencil line along the length.

The view from 30000 feet

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I have bought a used saw and of a variety I have no experience using and perhaps only a vague idea how I will use it.

1. Buy a $15 blade, or $20 if I don't want to use the local saw shop, and learn to use the saw with it, and learn how I will use the saw, and maybe even how much I will use the saw. Up-grade when I discover these inexpensive blades don't do something I need to do. Not feel bad if something screws up in my learning and I wreck the blade hitting a nail, a guide or whatever.

Discover that a blade good for sawing in a straight line is damn poor for cutting arcs. Learn enough about my saw to change a blade in a minute, presuming I bought a saw designed to be versatile enough to cut arcs and straight lines.

2. Or, spend vastly more to buy a blade ideally suited to squeezing a few thousandths of an inch of veneer per slice from rare or expensive wood, as well as other band sawing functions. Learn to use the saw with it, and learn how I will use the saw, and maybe even how much I will use the saw to saw rare and expensive veneer. Hope I don't wreck it learning and I will use it enough to be cost effective.

Re: I used to abide by #2

david weaver

..."you can't learn without good tools" kind of thing.

I've since given myself a break and start more like #1 on something new and give myself the time to learn without thinking that outcomes will be ideal right from the start.

I no longer have a bandsaw, but when I did, I got a defective resaw king. They were on sale and nonreturnable. Mine didn't have enough relief and it wouldn't cut straight because it was always under the influence of the wood.

I was assured that it was just me.

So I gave the blade away, at a loss of $175. Someone who was sure that it was just me had the same saw as I did and paid $14 for me to ship the blade to him.

He found the same thing.

My real scenario with the saw was maybe resawing 75 board feet a year with it, and I found a much less expensive blade worked fine. I resharpened silicon steel blades with a diamond chainsaw burr and never managed to fully wear one out (did have one break, but at a cost of $35 to replace it) to the point that it couldn't be resharpened again.

I must've ruined about $250 worth of lumber various times trying to get the resaw king to work, but only ruined one resaw learning the ropes with the less expensive blades.

Re: misprint? not 1/8"

david weaver

George mentioned freehand before - resawing to a line and skipping the fence. I fought with the fence on my bandsaw enough over the years that I ended up forgoing it until I sold it, too. When you're freehanding wood through a blade, it may not be OK for a 1/8th veneer, but for bookmatching, it's fine, and you get a much better feel for what the saw is doing.

I'm resawing by hand now with a frame saw, but the idea is sort of the same. If the saw feels like it's doing anything other than cutting, then something needs to be tended to. It's pretty uncommon that it feels like it's fighting you at all, other than the friction of the teeth and a little bit from the blade sides (something that probably doesn't happen on a shop bandsaw - the frame saw blade is almost 4" tall). Steering is subtle and constant.