Which Bandsaw?

[nicguthrie]

Ok. All woodworking versions of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May please step up!

I'm in the market for a bandsaw. I have in the region of £500 to spend (Yay windfall!) and want to get the best that I can for my cash, as I won't likely be getting enough money to ever rethink my purchase.

Requirements are:
1 - it must be new, please don't fire off the old "you'd get better value second hand" spiel, I know it very well, but for various reasons I simply can't buy second hand.
2 - I'd like it with enough power to cut veneers from or rip cut up to say 4 inch timber - I can't fit a table saw in my workshop too.
3 - cos I can't fit a table saw, a nice and accurate fence and mitre guide would be awesome
3 - a wheel base to be able to shift it easy would be nice, but not essential.

I'm mostly doing small work, making jewellery boxes, turning bowls etc with perhaps the occasional small furniture like chairs bedside cabinets and such, so massive capacities are not needed, but a big depth of cut can be very handy as a turner (from what I've heard)

I like the look of the Charnwood 730 at about £480 odds, 1.5hp motor, good sizes, but I'm a little worried about the lack of reviews or comments on it in general online.

I can see the potential benefit of cast iron band wheels over aluminium, so could be persuaded to go for the Record power BS300E that is a bit over my budget, but I'd rather not, as it drops my chances of managing to get a small bench mounted P/T to finish off my dream workshop.

Basically, I don't know enough about brands, availability, what's newest and greatest and what's best value for money or reliability, and to catch up on all the manufacturers models and everything else, would probably take so long, new models would be out before I got there - so I'm asking you guys to help me choose.

I'm very familliar with band saw use, cutting up parts for puzzles on one used to be part of one of my jobs, but I'm a newbie when it comes to terminology etc, so go easy on me

So Please, fire away with recommendations. A little "why and what for" about your opinion would be nice, cos since I've never even met a machine by metabo, sheppach, and all the other brands I see spoken of in here, we may as well be discussing italian sports cars for all I know about them. I'm relying on the experience of the community for this one.

Thanks in advance!
Nic.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi Nic
I can't help you with your choice of saw, but whatever you end up with, ditch the blade that comes with it and buy new from Ian John at Tuffsaws. His blades are absolutely top quality at a very reasonable price and the performance way outshines anything else on the market. Just tell him what you intend to do with it and he will sell you the right blade for the job. It's by far the easiest way to get a modest bandsaw (which is what you are shopping for) to behave as you would want it to.
S

 

[nicguthrie]

Thanks for the tip. Are they as good as the Axi premium ones? I was rather taken by the idea of the cobalt steel teeth that they advertise as being on the Axcalibur brand blades, since I know that it's cobalt steel drill bits that one uses for extreme drilling jobs like taking out the back of screws, so I assumed they'd be pretty amazing.

I'll certainly take a look tho - I'm always looking for tips and tidbits, and I've seen tuffsaws mentioned on here a few times over the time I've lurked, so they must be very good.

All I need is to know what bandsaw I should get, then I can call them with a size

 

[Steve Maskery]

Here's a challenge for you.
Trawl through all the posts on this site that mention Tuffsaws and find one where anyone has the remotest negative thing to say.

S

 

[deserter]

I used Axminster blades on my jet bandsaw for about 12 months, and found they dulled very fast, normally on one side of the blade more than the other. They wandered in the cut, and wouldn't achieve full tension.
I changed to tuff saws (which I think are actually cheaper than Axminster) and have had no problems with them at all since.
I too am in the market for a new saw around the same budget so am watching this thread with great interest. Rest assured however that which ever saw I get, it will be fitted with Tuffsaws blades from its first cut onwards.


~Nil carborundum illegitemi~

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Ive just got thru my 2nd tuffsaw blade.....27 cherry bowl blanks in a very short time...fabulous

 

[nicguthrie]

OK, ok, I'm convinced already!
now that I've got the blade sorted tho, has anyone got anything to say about the choice of saw it's self?

I just tracked down and read through JayWhoopee's blog on the Charnwood 730 that he bought, and all the finicking around that it took to get it working just right, and it's thrown me for a loop. I was just about set on that one, but the build quality doesn't seem to be particularly great.

He had trouble with the mitre gauge, the blade guides and the bit that increases and decreases the length of available blade whatever that was called again, and the closeups he took of the edges of the table etc look kind of roughly made. Thing is, with my lack of experience, I don't know if the troubles that he had are just par for the course with build quality being set by market forces these days to the minimum folks can get away with in general.

I'm even more at a loss than when I started this thread, so help?

Nic.

 

[devonwoody]

Which bandsaw?

It is the time of the year when most of the suppliers have a sale.

So look at those that retail around £800, give them a telephone call and worry them to death :wink:
Or I will do it for you at 10% commission.

 

[nicguthrie]

I was hoping to get one around the £5-600 mark at max. That's sort of what the original post was about. I'm not a professional woodworker, and I'm not planning on making lots of money from the things I make, but I'm only 40, have had to retire on health grounds and I'd like to be able to use the money that I do have to set myself upwith stuff I'll be able to rely on for a long time.

I'd like to be limited by my imagination and ability, however limited that is, rather than the equipment that I buy, so I'm just trying not to make a purchase I'll regret in a year, as I won't have the money again to replace it.

That being said, is there a reason I should go for the £800 mark? is there a sort of a shelf effect at that price? I'm familliar with it happening in PC hardware, as that was my last job, where you go over a certain budget and reach a better standard overall, but I'd rather not blow everything on the bandsaw if I can avoid it.

Nic.

 

[devonwoody]

If your health problem is of a physical nature, woodwork and the heavy weight of the timber you will have to take into consideration. Lifting a cubic foot of timber can reach 50lbs/22kgs so you need to bear that in mind.

 

[nicguthrie]

It is, but I can handle small projects, and larger ones with a willing assistant!

It's one of the reasons I want to be absolutely sure of getting the best saw for my money, I'm more reliant on decent power tools than most with this hobby, they make up for my faulty joints and tendons, lungs and muscles, at least until I can find a purveyor of full cybernetic body replacements.

Surprised at the lack of any response about the different bandsaws here, to this thread or the other one, ask a woodworker about his favourite tools and normally you're wading thru information for hours.

 

[rdesign]

out of the smaller bandsaws the dewalt is the only one i have seen that didn't need loads of messing with. I know one very satisfied owner anyway and he had a record before hand which was more expensive.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I suspect that turners use different lathes considerably more frequently than different bandsaws. Most people don't have experience of several different models.
A bandsaw is a very simple machine. OK the cheaper ones aren't as stiff as more substantial ones, and they probably won't have the guts to tension a 1" blade (even if the wheels are 1" wide) but then you don't need to be able to tension a 1" blade.
Almost all bandsaw performance problems are down to the quality of the blade and the way the machine is set up, both of which are down to the operator. It's just that some saws are friendlier to set up than others, particularly around the guide bearings. We have an old Startrite in the Community Workshop where I help out and it is a pig to set up, the bearing design is awful.
But just about any bandsaw can be made to perform well if it is set up properly and the right blade is installed.
S

 

[nicguthrie]

Thanks for that Steve. Good point. It's the main thing that put me off the charnwood when Jay blogged about the large amount of fettling it took to set up. As my joints and tendons are the worst of my problems, including those in my back, then bending around lifting heavy parts of the machine, and going so far as to file down parts of the saw like jay did, would stretch it to weeks of work for me with a lot of pain.

I guess with your tip, then pretty much any saw will do the job with a good blade in it, if it's set up right? So it's really down to finding one that requires as little fettling and finicking as possible. I'm curious tho, does this hold true with regards to the motor power? I've been avoiding the Axminster saw on account of it's far lower power motor than the Charnwood and Record, despite it's price being almost 60% that of the record I was looking at. If the difference is so little in real terms, I'd be mad to throw money away if it's unnecessary, and should just go with the Axi AWHBS350N.

I'll check out and price up that DeWalt Rdesign mentioned too, thanks for that RD.

I'm always surprised and get a kick out of recognising names on this forum, I have one of your videos, the one on making a Luthier Clamp, saved in my youtube folder - I was browsing it while you were writing your comment!

Life is full of odd coincidences.

Thanks again.

Nic.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Motor power is really only an issue if you are cutting thick stock. Obviously more is better, but any saw should cope happily with 2". If you intend to do resawing then that is a different issue.