wendel on blade guides

[sunnybob]

this might stir up a few bandsaw owners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQZY0bFDiw8

 

[Beau]

There is a man with far to much spare time on his hands!

Had a set like the ones he disliked the most on a Griggeo bandsaw and can confirm they are dreadful.

 

[Sideways]

I was fettling an abused Startrite 351 recently, the solid guide blocks badly chewed up. When I discovered the price of replacement blocks I measured up and bought some plain bearings that I bolted in place of the blocks and adjusted to almost touching. Next minute, someone's cutting a resinous softwood and the dust is being rolled onto the blade just like Mathias describes in the video, so hard it's solid !
After cleaning the blade and resetting with more clearance, it's been fine. I'll be interested to see how it lasts as even good bearings are less than a quarter the price of solid blocks.

 

[Robbo3]

this might stir up a few bandsaw owners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQZY0bFDiw8

That's nothing. This is the controversial one - starts at 5m 20s :twisted: :twisted:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k-r5utmU2Q

 

[Rorschach]

That's funny, I did a lot of cutting of rough wood last week. Brand new blade, cut lovely and straight UNTIL I got it stuck when a piece of the wood slipped and jammed the blade. After that, I started to get some drift in the cut and extra noise (over the normal noise of the machine)

 

[Beau]

this might stir up a few bandsaw owners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQZY0bFDiw8

That's nothing. This is the controversial one - starts at 5m 20s :twisted: :twisted:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k-r5utmU2Q

With that jig you have fantastic clearance of the sawdust and as he points out no pinching. Not going to make up a jig but having the dust clear so well I suspect would improve all cutting. Might try a packer underneath some wood next time I am re-sawing boards.

 

[custard]

I looked at that jig as I thought it might deliver some advantages for veneer cutting over my current set up, especially when used with some kind of stop block arrangement to get repeatably consistent veneer thicknesses, like for example this,

http://stockroomsupply.ca/shop/micromag-stop-block.html

However, I rejected it because it would mean the veneers would be bandsawn on both faces.

Why is that a problem? Well, it's not a terrible problem, but it's enough of a problem that on balance it didn't seem a good idea for my applications. The way I cut veneers (in common with every cabinet maker I've ever met) is that after each slice the donor board gets passed through the planer/thicknesser, so each cut begins with a perfectly flat face, and finishes with one planed face and one bandsawn face.

Using this jig you'd end up with two bandsawn faces, and the reality is that would reduce consistency and accuracy, plus it would involve additional work to subsequently flatten and smooth at least one face to make it glue ready, it's more work flattening a veneer than it is flattening a thick donor board. I'm sceptical that you could remove the donor board from the jig, plane it, and then replace it in the jig with absolute precision.

I'm not knocking the jig, I'm just pointing out some stuff that might not be immediately obvious to someone who hasn't cut veneers, but might be thinking this jig is a silver bullet solution.