Bandsaw Hacks - 5 Band Saw Tips and Tricks

Hello everyone. Today I call Canet. I'm doing

band

saw

tricks

, but before I get into that, for those of you who have asked me and some of you have asked me several times, if I have t-shirts, I finally have t-. shirts and if you want to see them the link is in the description box below but let's start with the

band

saw

tricks

. Well, since I'm starting here, I first want to talk about tires, which is the layer of rubber on top. the wheels and I recommend that if you don't use your bandsaw every day, you loosen the tension on your bandsaw blades because when you let the tension go too often it creates a flat spot on the top of the tires, so so when you go to spin your band saw it creates a big vibration and you hear this ouap ouap ouap ouap ouap and some people think they have broken their band saw, but it's just because the blade goes over the flat parts, but yes If you keep running, it will eventually shut down, but in the meantime, it can be quite scary for some people.

Another thing that can create noise and vibration is when sawdust builds up between the blade and the tire and sometimes if the blade is hot it actually fuses the sawdust directly to the tire and just the compression of that sawdust against the blade can do that and I recommend from time to time of course we're always disconnected here when we work within the band so I just used the edge of one of my chisels and just go around the entire sheet and make sure there are no little pieces of sawdust stuck there; You need to do it regularly anyway and that will only give you smoother operation of the band saw.

Band saw blades can become dull quite easily and the reason is because they are steel, there is no carbide in most band saw blades and what happens is that the blades when heated get so hot that sometimes Sometimes the

tips

of the teeth tend to melt a little bit and lose their handling and become dull and the way to tell if your band saw blade is dull is when you grab that blade with your finger, it should tend to a hook, it should tend to want to grab your finger like a fish hook would if you don't.

Your bandsaw blade is probably dull if you've ever been cutting wood with your bandsaw and find that as you push the wood you have to move it at a slight angle to follow a line called a band saw. blade drift and in an ideal world we would never have blade drift but we do get it from time to time and there are many reasons for it, sometimes the blade is dull sometimes the blade is dull on one side which can happen sometimes it's the setup. The way it is it could be that the top or bottom tires could be a little bit bad, there are many reasons for that, but I'm going to show you how you can compensate for that.

Well, I've tensioned the blade down, they've turned the blade. I turn it on and you're looking at this over your shoulder and what I'm going to do, I'm going to start pushing this wood in and I expect to have to turn the wood one way or another to as you get somewhere up here and then I'm going to stop it now that the blade has stopped now that there's not too much drift. I'm going to move the camera to this side here and you can see here there's a little bit of drift, you can see it's the angle here, it's a little bit higher, what you can do now if you want to set up a fence, this is what you can use now, so there I set it up, I'm only using one piece. of wood you don't need anything fancy and I'm just holding it and I'm actually holding it at a little angle and now when I push the wood it can run along that fence and it will be on the right. angle because that fence is compensating for drift and you can see if I've taken a little bit more time, I could have gotten it absolutely perfect, but it's a little bit off, but that doesn't matter because that's how you can readjust a fence for drift drift. band saw many band saws do not come with fences or fences are optional for them and you know the other thing you can do is use a speed square and again you can set it if there is some drift If you find that there is some drift, you can set it up with drift or if you're just making some small cuts you can just put it in the right square the way it is, clamp it with some quick release clamps like that and now you have an instant square or instant fence on your saw. tape and you can go ahead and cut the wood and you know what, sometimes if you want it a little higher, check this out, you can put in a piece of scrap wood. anything there just to give it a little bit of lift and now you can move the flatter part over there if you want and again go ahead and hold it like this and like that and now you have whoops there you go now We have an even thicker fence so if you have thicker wood, taller wood here you can use a thicker one so there are a lot of different options using a speed square very often one of the things we like to do with band saws is cut a little bit and stir the bits for veneer and that sort of thing and the band saw is perfect for that and if you have a commercial fence on your band saw they will usually just move back and forth in parallel and every once in a while when it's cutting, trying to cut sheets, what will it do?

This happens due to blade drift when you use the guide, the blade will actually come off the wood, not give you a complete cut, or will start to jam because you want the blade. wanting to go deeper into the wood can be very annoying so what we do instead of using this type of parallel fence we use something called a pivot fence and this is what a pivot fence looks like, it's basically just a piece of wood sometimes some people around them, it doesn't matter if it's sharp or round, it's probably a little bit easier for the wood that you're cutting and basically you just set a distance and now I'm going to temporarily hold it there just for show.

You understand how this works and the idea with this is that once you place them, because that little fence is not fixed in one place, you can when you start placing wood, you can move it as you go if you draw a line. on your wood you can follow that line and hold it against this little sharp edge here or this rounded edge if you round yours and you can keep that distance and by turning over that fence you can get some very nice veneers, but there's another thing you can do that I like to do, which is even easier than this, let me go to the table saw and show you here on the table saw.

I have installed a seven and a quarter inch circular saw blade, in this case it is a 24 tooth one. and what I'm going to do, I'm going to use this blade and I really prefer these Freud Diablo blades and the reason is because they are so thin that I'm sure they are the thinnest circular saw blades on the market. and they just do a great job, but look what I'm going to do to have a line to follow now that I've set up my table saw blade and you'll notice that I'm going to cut a very thin slice.

I'm going to angle the wood and make another cut on the end and then I'll make one more on this side and that will give me a leading edge that I can then take to my band saw, so let's go. Go ahead, I can take that to my band saw now and that will give the blade a track to run on and see how easy it is, okay, let's go ahead and cut that sheet metal. I have used the swivel guide in the past, but I prefer the table. saw method now because not only does it work just as well, but it also means a little less wear on the band saw blades.

This concludes my video on band saw

tips

and tricks. I'm Colin Cat for woodworking. where thanks for seeing you