Just wondering how you do it:
1. What size band saw do you have?
2. What size blade do you use?
3. Do you use a tall fence during resawing?
4. Did you make the fence? Or do you use a commercial fence?
5. When resawing, do you feed the stock by hand, or do you use a power feeder?

I’ve only acquired a bandsaw in July 2009, after drooling for one for many years.

Mine is a “no-name” brand, made in China, with no serial number. It is advertised on a photocopy brochure as a “20 incher,” but I measure it out at 19″. They state in the brochure that it has a 2,200 Watt motor.

Take it or leave it. Your choice. I do not know what to believe anymore…

IT IS A BIG BUGGER!

At 360 kilos it outweights my Jet mobile unit wheels set limit by 60 kilos!

I believe that, because I can see it in the sagging!

Did I mention that this is HEAVY..?

I love it!

It is solidly, but cheaply made. The fence had to be shimmed to allow for straight cutting with the standard fitted crappy 1″ blade to allow for drift. I still do not have it tuned in right in that department, because I’ve run out of room without machining or filing. I think a descent blade will help, so I’m not going there right now. Problem is, descent blades resides in Merry Ca, some distance away! LOL!

I HATE its round, copper based guide blocks! No matter how good you try to set it up, you will ALWAYS get screeching when you start sawing. I will remove the housings, take them with me, and try to get replacement parts in the States when I get over there.

ANY help in this regard will be very much appreciated!

“So, Hoody, you IDIOT, why did you buy it..?,” you may rightfully ask..

I wanted a BIG saw. I GOT a BIG saw.

I paid R 14,000-00 for it instead of R 20,000-00 for an 18″ Jet.

Translated into American, that means $ 1905-00/ $ 2721-00 at today’s exchange rate of R 7,35 = $ 1-00.

I guess I just got motivated by figures! LOL!

The saw performs great with the 1 ” blade, but I’m not that happy with the fence. I’ll work on it. Powerfull bandsaw!

I now need a smaller bandsaw to fill the gap between this monster and my scrollsaw. I’ll go for a tabletop model on this.

Changing blades out of a big bandsaw just pees on my pants’ cuffs…

You said: Changing blades out of a big bandsaw just pees on my pants’ cuffs…

Now that Laguna is my sponsor, I got really interested and started watching their videos. I apologize ahead of time if they are too basic – just wanted to send the links, in case you are unable to sleep tonight

A nice video on folding the blade: http://www.lagunatools.com/company/video-blade?bcpid=68357648001&bclid=68293293001&bctid=68238854001

On changing the band saw blade: http://www.lagunatools.com/company/video-blade?bcpid=68357648001&bclid=68293293001&bctid=68238854001

The main Videos page is located at this link: http://www.lagunatools.com/company/videos

Sorry, sir…

I did not watch your links apart from the first one.

I know how to fold my bandsaw blades, although I’m sure there are are many variants of it.

I’m good with my own method.

What p**sses me of , Al, is the physical act of performing the change of a blade.

UGH! I Hate it! LOL!

That is why I’m aiming for a scrollsaw for cutting tiny curves, a benchtop bandsaw for cutting basically, all thar we need, and the Bigass bandsaw for doing resawing!

Resawing I like!

hoody,

I apologize, as I read the last sentence as you also “…having trouble folding the blades…” My BAD!!!

I understand the part about changing the blades! I fight it till the last minute, when I actually *have* to do it. Sandy has the scroll saw, which is terrific but not always practical, especially with some of the larger pieces. The idea of having a benchtop band saw is actually very appealing, and I wish we had gone that route too. Now every surface is busy! LOL

hoody,

That band saw is a beast! I cannot imagine handling something that heavy in my shop. Even the 8-inch jointer weighed less than your band saw…

You are right about the disk guide blocks. I believe we call those “Euro Guides” here, possibly meaning they are (or were?) popular in Europe at some point. My 17-inch Grizzly came with those, and I replaced them with the Carter guides. The saw came with these:

And I replaced them with these:

If you want to read a little more on the blog, you will find the article at http://sandal-woodsblog.com/2008/02/05/my-setup-for-resawing-boards-with-the-band-saw/ . I still get many questions about resawing on the band saw, and the articles have been quite popular.

If you contact Carter, they will likely be able to recommend the best option for your saw. However, they would need more details than you may have. I had to go through three iterations of guides until I finally received a set of upper and lower guides that worked very, very well.

Maybe your saw is made on the same assembly line as Grizzly or some of the others. If that is the case, then you just need to find out *which* – this can be trying, at best.

@Hoodmister,
I have a MiniMax 16 and for the most part happy, It slices and dices and will cut a log is half with no issue. But the guides like yours were a bit noisy. I will one day change them out for better guides maybe even the Laguna Ceramic, but one thing I did find was taking the guides off and polishing them flat. The reason, if yours are like mine, they have ridges which cause vibration(sqeaks). After smoothing mine off and setting them a sheet of paper thickness off the blade, much better. Just a thought. Oh don’t forget the bottom ones.

Thanks for the info, Al and Bill..!

It is actually the bottom guides that are screaming.

I’ll check out how smooth they are, Bill. I do not recall any visible ridges.

I’ve read about the Carter guides before.

I’ll take pics of my guides over the weekend and post it here.

This is a pic of it, and the rudimentary garage/shop:

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee212/Constantcompanion/th_Box005.jpg

OK.

Why does it show up so tiny, Al..?

The link was actually a link to a thumbnail, hoody. The prefix “th” right before the file name made it appear a lot smaller. If you remove the prefix, then it displays in full:

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee212/Constantcompanion/Box005.jpg

Better yet, you can post it here:

To place an image right here, use the following code, enclosed in the “less than” and the “grater than” symbols, as follows:

Code:
img width=”MAX 500 PIXELS” src=”THE ACTUAL LOCATION OF THE IMAGE – THE IMAGE URL”

NOTE: For the two images above I used 580 pixels as the width, and it ran over the margins. So, adjust the size as you wish.

hoody,

That looks like a 19-inch white copy of my 17-inch Grizzly! I don’t see the tension control. Other than that, it is virtually identical. The Grizzly has a blade tracking observation window just above the lock knob for the guard wheel. Even the fence support has the same shape.

I bet it is made in Taiwan in the same assembly line as the Grizzly. When you contact Carter, it will help them to have as much information transmitted as is possible.

GREAT shop, and lots of Triton orange. You are set up very, very well!

Thanks, Al!

The tension control is the wheel that faces downwards and tracking control is the smallest wheel visible in the pic. No brake is fitted. They just covered the hole for it, so it can be retro fitted. Dust extraction works well with very little seepage on and below the table. It does not have a blade tracking observation window.

I plan to extend the garage/shop to practically almost double its size in the near future, so that I can fit three cars and the shop with ease. Moving the machines between my two workbenches every night to fit two cars now, got old pretty quickly! LOL!

hoody,

I do believe that Carter *should* be able to fir their guides properly – at least, I hope they will. Reason I say that, it took two iterations before we got the offset from the support bar correctly. And that offset is critical, to be able to adjust the thrust bearing properly. You have only about 1/2-inch space to adjust that bearing; it is the one that gives the support on the back edge of the blade.

The band saw should last you a lifetime! Thanks for sharing!

Lets see if I can manage this!

Nope, it did not work!

Here are Photobucket pics showing the guides. For some reason I lost a post with the links here! LOL!

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee212/Constantcompanion/Bandsaw001.jpg?t=1270569321

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee212/Constantcompanion/Bandsaw002.jpg?t=1270569366

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee212/Constantcompanion/Bandsaw003.jpg?t=1270569406