Bandsaw Bedlam

[Roy Kristiansen]

Hi gents,

This is my first post, (for I've silently watched in the past) so please bear with me- etiquette and so forth. I'm new to woodshops, but not to working with wood (grew up working for my dad's trim company in my youth-mostly high end homes and such). Well I'm older now, and find myself doing numerous woodworking projects in my basement (mostly furniture), and that leads me to my question for you seasoned veterans. I need to get a band saw. Up till now, haven't thought I'd need one, but find I can only go so far with a table saw. I can buy wood from a small country mill but if I want thinner stock I'm somewhat limited to planning it down (very wasteful), and that's where the band saw comes in. Yes, that right, which one to get. I done considerable research but still not decided; I want quality and am not afraid to pay for it, but a new Italian band saw is hard to justify at this stage, so having said that, I guess I'm looking at the Asian input market. So what separates the field, knowing myself like I do, it needs to work well, and be reliable. Will I be able to resaw Redwoods? I think not, but that's OK...for now. The big thing I struggle with, mostly due to lack of experience is the guides. Are the Laguna ceramic guides that much better at controlling the blade than the roller guides found on the new Jet machines? My short list of saws thus far is the Laguna 14-12 or SUV, or the new JET 14" steel frame. All the publications rate the 14-12 very good, I'm perplexed why I don't see more on the Jet 14SF. Being I'm 6' 3" tall I'm leaning toward the Jet for two reasons-taller table height, and the roller guides are a cinch to adjust. The real question I guess I'm asking is: Will I be able to see a difference in cut quality between ceramics (Laguna) and the rollers found on a Jet machine?

Thanks in advance,
Roy

[David Ragan]

All I can say is that when I bought my saw (second one), that it was a little short. Im 75". Just made a small platform (very sturdy, of course), put some wheels on it-now perfect. ie, the height can easily be changed.

[Mike Tekin]

Roy,

Here is my take- both saws are good - The Laguna 14-12 is a slightly less heavy duty saw than the SUV and the Jet - they are almost 100 more pounds of steel and cast iron. If you get the Jet go for 3hp, if not, get the 14-12, the Laguna Suv, has a very low table and in my opinion has lower quality finish than the 14-12.

You wont tell difference in cut with guides but ceramic is pretty much low maintainence/wont gum up seize on you, second, the Laguna guides have 10 contact points with the blade where as bl bearing guides have 6.

Jet gives you 5 year warranty, Laguna 1

I looked at these three saw extensivly and settled on the 14-12 by saving several hundred dollars for my needs- the 14-12 is an amazing saw for less than 1100

FYI- if you hear comments about customer service and Laguna - its fine- I dealt with all brands and found others much much worse

Hi gents,

This is my first post, (for I've silently watched in the past) so please bear with me- etiquette and so forth. I'm new to woodshops, but not to working with wood (grew up working for my dad's trim company in my youth-mostly high end homes and such). Well I'm older now, and find myself doing numerous woodworking projects in my basement (mostly furniture), and that leads me to my question for you seasoned veterans. I need to get a band saw. Up till now, haven't thought I'd need one, but find I can only go so far with a table saw. I can buy wood from a small country mill but if I want thinner stock I'm somewhat limited to planning it down (very wasteful), and that's where the band saw comes in. Yes, that right, which one to get. I done considerable research but still not decided; I want quality and am not afraid to pay for it, but a new Italian band saw is hard to justify at this stage, so having said that, I guess I'm looking at the Asian input market. So what separates the field, knowing myself like I do, it needs to work well, and be reliable. Will I be able to resaw Redwoods? I think not, but that's OK...for now. The big thing I struggle with, mostly due to lack of experience is the guides. Are the Laguna ceramic guides that much better at controlling the blade than the roller guides found on the new Jet machines? My short list of saws thus far is the Laguna 14-12 or SUV, or the new JET 14" steel frame. All the publications rate the 14-12 very good, I'm perplexed why I don't see more on the Jet 14SF. Being I'm 6' 3" tall I'm leaning toward the Jet for two reasons-taller table height, and the roller guides are a cinch to adjust. The real question I guess I'm asking is: Will I be able to see a difference in cut quality between ceramics (Laguna) and the rollers found on a Jet machine?

Thanks in advance,
Roy

[John C Bush]

Italians are sexy but I,ve had great performance with a Griz 21"er. Roller bearing quides work well but the most important thing is a good blade and setup. I think you can get good resaw results from most all the heavier duty machines. Have fun shopping.

[Andrew Hughes]

I have two bandsaws one small one big.The two things that are the most important to me are the size of the table and length of the blade.The longer blade last much longer before it gets dull.Also the 20 inch wheel can handle thicker bands so more choices.When buys blades.
Who ever saw you buy is up to you they all make good ones and sometimes duds.Good luck.Aj

[ian maybury]

Hi Roy. I'd argue that duds apart it's such a highly evolved market that you get nothing for nothing. As in there's an almost infintely graded continuum of price/capability points in the market. I'm also of the persuasion that figures that bandsaws are a tool where you can't have too much cubes. (so to speak) The issue is that it's not always that easy to figure where a given saw lies on the continuum.

Something at about the level of the Hammer N4400 is about entry point for reasonably serious resawing I'd argue, heavier and bigger saws with larger wheels get faster cutting and less picky about set up. Once the basic set up is OK much of the hoopla about bandsaws tends to arise i think as a result of trying to get underspecified saws to handle work they were not really designed for.

Heavy duty being the point - there's typically light, medium and heavy duty saws in the original manufacturers' lines, and the lighter ones are often (as i found out the hard way) profiling oriented and not stiff enough to to handle the required depth of cut for deeper (say over 6in) resawing. Lots are re-sold under their own branding by importers that may cherry pick single models from a maker's line - so the existence of heavier models may sometimes not be obvious. (taking a look at e.g. the original Italian manufacturer's website san be informative in this regard)

Don't be misled by clearance under the top guides - they love to pitch that to imply resaw capability - and maybe it is on polystyrene foam - but not on hardwoods with a coarse toothed carbide resaw blade. When say 12in worth of teeth bite more or less simultaneously the saw has to have a strong enough chassis and spring and enough motor torque be able to handle the resulting pretty considerable cutting force without twisting, bogging or dissolving into screeching vibration.

There's a grey area it looks like in the 400 - 500mm dia wheel range where some saws are heavy enough to have decent resaw capability, and some not. Others are better placed than me to advise on which does/doesn't. The same applies as saws get bigger, but by say 600mm most are fairly capable. Exceptions are saws like the 16in Minimax and one or two other US market Italians and the equivalent Taiwanese (e.g. Grizzly 636X) which are optimised with a heavy chassis for resawing - they have more resaw capability than typical saws at that size...

larger say 20 in plus saws are typically set up with flatter wheel profiles/less crowning/wider guides to run wider blades. The one disadvantage i've found with heading into this space is that they can be awkward to track small 1/8 or 1/4in blades on if you need to do a lot of fine profiling - but there's set ups about for doing this too. Some keep a smaller saw for this purpose.

ian

[Bill Adamsen]

I also have two, and both get a lot of use. Larger (800mm, ~28") has a higher tensioned carbide blade that is great for anything requiring a straight cut. The 14" Delta has a narrow blade for curves. They both have bearing guides in thrust and standard soft metal guides for tracking, and both work just fine.

While I've never used one, the heavier and larger Grizzly units (starting with the 17" models) look to me like they'd be good universal machines.

[Mike Henderson]

Where are you located? Sometime you can find a very good band saw used for half the price new.

Mike

[Prashun Patel]

There are plenty of good, reasonably proficient bandsaws out there.

The bearings and guides don't make as much a difference in cut quality as power and the right blade do.

Both of my saws have had bearing guides, and they worked fine for resawing and curve cutting and ripping.

For me, I find the following things important in a bandsaw: power, height and throat capacity, ease of guide adjustment, ease of tension adjustment, stability of the table.

Do you have 240v power?

[Roy Kristiansen]

Thanks everyone for all your help, you've given me some good points. I was thinking on going with a smaller 115 VAC machine (especially not having one before), but sorta hearing the smaller machine frames really aren't stiff enough to handle the dynamic forces associated with serious resawing -blade tension for thicker blades, forces pulling thru thick stock, and such (not trying to slight anybody's machine). I guess it comes down to what I plan on using it for. While I'm not at the point of needing a resaw monster, I'd hate to buy something only to want to replace it after seeing what a band saw can do/almost do. I visited Minmax's site after reading Ian's post above, I then stumbled onto a video for the MM16, while it did showcase their saw, I learned quite a bit about band saws. I figure it's time to run another 220 line in the basement I guess I have time, as the path to my walk out basement is covered with snow, I moved out of New England to Southern MD, I was told the winters were mild here, hmmm... where is that guy?

Thanks again everyone-I'm new to this whole blogging thing, it's really neat that folks I don't even know go out of their way to help out.

[Myk Rian]

Sorry, Roy.
But reading your posts give me a headache. Can you use paragraphs?

[Wade Lippman]

I won't argue for my bandsaw (Rikon 18") but will recommend that you consider putting a subpanel in the basement. If you stay with WW you will need a lot more circuits than you think, and will regret not having done it sooner than later.

[Jim Andrew]

The east coast states have many used machines for sale. Look at craigslist, woodweb, irs auctions, maybe others. A few months ago I saw a Hammer sliding table saw, a A331 planer surfacer, and a Hammer bandsaw for sale, from the same owner. About 3 years old and half the price of new. Hobby used machines.