bandsaw blades

For roughing out bowl blanks I suggest using a 3 TPI blade. The width of the blade would be determined by the radius of the blank you want. Check out Suffolk Machinery's web site (or give them a call) for more information.

A skip tooth would be nice also. A small number of teeth offers many advantages -- one of them is that they are real easy to resharpen with a dremel tool. You can't do as good a job as factory but for our uses, it doesn't matter.

Bill

no(SPAM)vasys wrote:

Bill Rubenstein wrote in news:OGm5e.2895$3z3.2137 @newssvr12.news.prodigy.com:

A friend of mine in San Francisco resharpens his bandsaw blades with a Dremel, and cuts veneers to 3/32, for use on his spendy furniture. Takes him less time to resharpen than it takes me to change to a fresh blade.

Start with a good quality blade, however.

Patriarch, thinking it's really nice to have friends who know a lot more than he does...

There's a lot to bandsawing that you'll want to learn. The Suffolk site will have information on the circle sizes for various blade widths, and a bit on tooth patterns. For green wood you'll want some set to the teeth for dust clearing. I use a 1/2" 3AS all the time, which will cut a down to 6" diameter circle easily, though 5 is supposedly the limit.

I recommend you read the information on the site, and try to get ahold of Duginskie's book for saw tuning and circle jig design. The circle jig allows you to cut a round shape with a straight blade as easily as that can be accomplished.

NB - Wet wood is hard on roller guides. If you have them, pay special care to their cleaning. If you don't take a good look at ceramic as an option.

Absolutely! I've got Carter guides on my saw (wish I knew how much green wood I'd be trimming down or how much gunk can get packed onto the outer roller surface cutting green wood when I opted for the factory upgrade package). First off, I set up my rollers so they're in light contact with the blade. In other words, if you lightly touch the spinning roller while the saw is running the roller easily stops. This may account for some buildup that gets packed onto the blade and roller - or maybe has little bearing (groan) on the matter.

Occasionally while cutting and certainly before shutting the saw down for the day I try to make it a habit to clean the rollers and blade body: While the saw is running I take a scrap piece of wood and lightly touch the roller surface and the blade behind the teeth to scrape off the gunk. Sometimes I'll have to resort to using two scrap pieces ­ one to push the blade sideways slightly to drive the roller better while the other cleans the surface.

I may get flamed for practicing and promoting what may be viewed as an unsafe procedure, but I see little danger with the guides lowered to a few inches from the table.

One of these days I'm going to have to rig up an internal blade brush/scraper - but am not sure how much difference it'll make to needing to perform my roller cleaning method.