Grizzly G0457 14" Bandsaw Blade alignment

[Tom Winship]

I have this bandsaw about 3 years old now. Was doing cleaning and maintenance on it and squaring table to blade and resaw fence, etc.. Noticed that a square placed between top of table and teeth on blade is out of square (gap of 1/16" or more at bottom of square when touching teeth at top).

1. Is this normal?
2. If not normal, will it hurt anything?

Thanks in advance.

[Howard Acheson]

Are you talking side to side or front to back squareness? Do you have the setup and alignment instructions that came with the saw? Band saws are best aligned by following steps in a certain order.

[glenn bradley]

1. Is this normal?
2. If not normal, will it hurt anything?

1. No. This would normally be taken care of when you square the table to the blade. If the table is not flat, I would square the table as best I could.
2. Depends how you use the saw. Your cuts will obviously not be square (perpendicular to the reference surface). For tenons and such things this would be a real problem. For roughing out curves that will be faired and finished with other tools anyway, not so much of an issue.

If this has not been an issue to date, I would say the things you use the saw for are not ones that would show this to be troublesome. There are many things I use my saw for where this alignment problem would not show itself. The cuts are just preparation for final shaping or sizing. Other things, like joinery, would not tolerate the situation since things would not mate as desired/expected. I'm all for having things dialed in as close as you can get them but, taking away from shop time to fix something that has never been a problem and was just something you happened to catch (that is; due to checking and not due to problems) may or may not fit into your schedule. I'd fix it if possible .

[Van Huskey]

1. No. This would nomrally be taken care of when you square the table to the blade

Yep, you need to square the blade to the table both from the side and from the back, more of an issue if it is not square from the side though.

[Tom Winship]

The blade is square side to side. Front to back is where it is off. The table sits in truninions, so I guess the attachment points of the trunions to the frame would be where to shim it. There are no shims there at the moment.
Thanks, all.

[Prashun Patel]

I bet it won't matter on strait cuts, but would affect the squareness of any curved cut.

[Van Huskey]

The blade is square side to side. Front to back is where it is off. The table sits in truninions, so I guess the attachment points of the trunions to the frame would be where to shim it. There are no shims there at the moment.
Thanks, all.

Do you track with the blade at the top of the crown are do you the method where you run the blade on the front or back of the crown to reduce drift? If you use the corwn to pull the blade (not my method but some people like it) the blade will exhibit what you are talking about. If you track your blade "normally" then it should be sqaure from the back (checking on the tooth side is harder) BUT it probably won't exhibit any real issues with cuts, if it hasn't caused issues I probably wouldn't fool with it but shimming would be easy if you decide to.

[Bill Huber]

would affect the squareness of any curved cut.

How would it do that?

I can see the problem with the tenon cuts but I am missing the curved cuts.

[Tom Winship]

I bet it won't matter on strait cuts, but would affect the squareness of any curved cut.

I am gonna have to think on that one, Prashun. Haven't used my engineering brain in almost 6 years.
I do kind of see what you are saying.

[Myk Rian]

Are the wheels co-planar? That's about the only thing that would affect front-to-back square.
I wouldn't shim the trunions.

[Prashun Patel]

I could be wrong. I can't get my head fully around it. However if you think about it at the limit of the forward tilt being close to 90 degrees then it would be impossible to cut a curve on the face of the wood. I can't figure out if is means a slight tilt would cause a bevel on the edge, a cove on the edge, or just a wider kerf. I'm beginning to think its a wider kerf.

Gonna grave to try this with a ramp sled on monday...