Bandsaw resaw blade question?

in this case...

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

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

....there is nothing not good about a steel band saw blade. You might put it on a not so good saw. But furniture factories and professional shops have been using steel blades just fine for decades. Carbide simply stays sharp longer and it might, if optimized, cut smoother, or not.

With the teeth optimized for the task being employed the carbide blade will saw a smoother cut. A friend has one with a tooth spacing and pattern optimized for smooth resaw. He sliced some "priceless" (for me) crotch walnut veneer that I could glue without further refinement......AFTER.....we learned how to keep the billet from warping after each cut. A post-cut warp a few thousandths of an inch wastes the same lumber as a saw tooth groove the same depth. If the billet warps or the blade doesn't track straight the carbide tooth doesn't waste less wood.

And just because it is carbide does not mean it has teeth optimized for the intended sawing task. Is the blade variable pitch? What are the teeth per inch? An inexpensive carbide blade will saw no smoother than a quality steel blade. It will last longer unless it hits something not wood.

Short fence.

Mark Hennebury

The Saw has a short fence. Don't put a long one on it.

The fence is adjustable. no need to clamp a tapered board to it, you can adjust it.

Japanese machinery is usually capable of doing its job quite well.

The saw is made for resawing.

It is designed for a wide thin-kerf resaw blade that is highly tensioned. It will cut fine if the blade is properly sharpened and not dull and bent.

You can use a variety of other blades on with the phenolic guides.

The motor is like a router motor and runs high rpm through a gearbox. you can change it out for a regular motor quite easily.

Re: Short fence.

Barry Irby

Thanks Mark....

I have been staring at the short fence and decided to leave it short. For perhaps an odd reason. I have a tiny shop and this new to me bandsaw will spend its life in an adjacent room, except when I need it. I will roll it into my shop through a pedestrian door. Turns out that to come through the door I have to move the fence all the way forward or to the right of the blade and then the knob will "button" through the door. I also concluded that the part of the fence beyond the cut was more likely to interfere with a straight cut than to help it.

The fence is adjustable but in my case it would not swing far enough to compensate for the drift. This leads me to wonder if the blade is damaged or poorly sharpened.

I appreciate your help.

Re: The view from 30000 feet

Barry Irby

Thank you Bill....

Yes I have bought a bandsaw I know little about. I did not even know Hitachi made bandsaws or that anyone made one like this. I have been struggling with my existing bandsaw for years and decided the solution was a second bandsaw, one for straight cutting/resawing and the other for general use/curves.

I have a few hundred dollars invested in this so far, little enough that if it fails to perform I will not be heart broken or financially ruined.

I want to start learning about the blade but I don't want to start by buying a steel mill. I asked here on WoodCentral in hopes of taking advantage of the vast knowledge base, yours included.

For example, If I buy an inexpensive steel blade and learn to use it, what does that tell me about the performance of a carbide tipped blade? If I find a blade that will slice veneer will it not also resaw drawer sides. I am hoping someone will narrow down the search a bit for me. I tuned up the 3" wide blade and it cuts pretty well, maybe good enough but I am still curious about what is available.

Thanks you for your help.

Re: 100% agree...

david weaver

...the other issue that I had is that when I'm working with something and it's just not agreeing, I want to be able to modify it. Some of the nicer stuff is like working on rails. There's not enough relief on the resaw king blade I had. My saw wasn't that great, but the blade was well below the size that it would stabilize. Looking at it, I think that it may have been out of spec in terms of the relief to try to get a smoother cut. It burned instead, and if given too much feed pressure to avoid burning, it would wander.

I wanted to add relief to the teeth, and if it was a steel saw, I could've just fixed the issue by cheaply replacing it or modifying it. I couldn't. All was lost. The next guy only lost the cost of shipping, but I'm sure he thought he was in for a free $225 blade that I got for a "deal" on clearance.

I learned a lesson. I often don't work precise enough to take advantage of what's being offered. IF the blade I ordered hadn't been defective, I could see where someone making things for a living (be it veneers or whatever else) would love the quality of the cut and perhaps be able to saw through hard stuff with little clean up.

As soon as the blade wanders, the deal is off. If it had just burned a little, I could live with it, but it was unworkable and at first I didn't know what to blame. I got lots of long distance bad advice from forums and fought with it way too long before going back to cheap blades.

I do really enjoy having a bandsaw, but have none now. I also enjoy simple. I really hate having a unique piece of stock and ruining it with blade wander, forcing a project to be set aside, or standing in front of a saw and wondering whether it will or won't cooperate, or what might get ruined next.

I'd like to make a small bandmill at some point, but would never have the quality of wood needed (potential nails, etc) from local sources to be sure I wouldn't blow out an expensive blade on metal in a tree. All of the logs and sections of tree that I can get a hold of around here are suburban. The two times I've seen any neighbors getting any significant tree work done, several trees were ground in their entirety, bucked into smaller pieces only to be able to haul them out of the yard .

Re: misprint? not 1/8"

John K Jordan

I'm guessing 1/8" or less. No need to read this as 0.125

That's more than needed for most rough sawn boards from many sawmills.

a convenient situation to have

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

"solution was a second band saw, one for straight cutting/resawing and the other for general use/curves."

When I got my used 20" Delta I set it up for rip cutting including resawing. I kept the 14" with a 6 tpi 3/8" blade for curvy stuff. With this dual setup I find I use the band saws more and the table saw less.

If the saw you bought is the one I saw at IWF some years ago, and the same as Cormark Lumber has for resawing, it is singularly designed for resawing boards rapidly and accurately. The tires, wheels guides etc are designed to track a wide resaw blade. I think there is some risk presuming a conventional bade will work well on this saw. I sure as hell would not be buying a $200+ variable pitch carbide blade to find out even if others get smooth cuts with this blade on a conventional saw.

If I get by Cormark soon I will see what blade they have on the saw now. They saw mostly exotics for resale as thin lumber, supplying Woodcraft and others. Some years ago they had a several inch wide blade on it that was not carbide and they were resawing African Blackwood.

If I was in your shoes I would buy a new blade for the saw and this blade would be the blade the saw was designed to use. If you have enough resawing to justifying owning this saw the rapid and accurate feature of this saw/blade combination will be optimum to meet the need. Other's experience with blades optimized for typical band saws may be irrelevant to this band saw specifically designed to be a resaw....or maybe not. In any case I would start with what the saw was designed to use and see if that met my needs.

I don't know how much resawing you have done, but if it is much you will have discovered that tracking is vastly more important then tooth marks. The wide blade/wheels/tires on this saw are designed to track accurate under load while pushing lumber through it at something more than the rate glaciers move. If this feature is not something important to you, you bought the wrong saw. I'd like to borrow it tomorrow to resaw 100 linear feet of 6" dry cherry.

Thanks Bill....

Barry Irby

I have been chasing my tail on this. Thanks for gelling it down. I think you are correct abut using an original blade. Eliminate one variable. I have to assume Hitachi knew something when they sent that blade with the saw.

I think I will order a new Stellite blade. The blade I have has a tooth missing and I sharpened it myself because the local saw service wouldn't even look at it. A new blade would take out whatever might be going on with the old blade and give me a base line.

Incidentally, I looked at a Youtube video of this saw cutting with a stock feeder on it. They re sawed a piece of what looked like white pine about 6" wide at 30 feet a minute. I don't have a stock feeder and don't do enough resawing to justify one, but that looked like fun.

If I had this up and running well I'd be happy to let you use it. Thanks for your thoughts.

Re: Thanks Bill....

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Incidentally, I looked at a Youtube video of this saw cutting with a stock feeder on it.

That is what I saw at IWF. Boards in, 2X boards out, in no time. As I recall surface would have been easy to clean up.