Official Luthiers Forum!

With oily wood yes the blade does get gunk. However after we started using the power feeder and the water mist the problem became a lot less. When I am cutting oily wood I increase the amount of water in the mist and it seems to keep the blade clean. Also better dust suction, the fine kerf of the RK benefits from more suction especially a suction port directly below the table where the dust first comes out of the cut.



Because it is making coarser sawdust and has a bigger kerf.


The power feed allows me to accurately make slices 1mm thick, so it is possible to go thinner with the RK blade.



Some clients want special wood sawed close to final thickness but that is always a risk. Normally we make sides 3mm and backs 3.5. On really rare wood I will measure the billet thickness and since I know the kerf is exactly 1.12mm I will adjust the slice thickness to come out exactly in even sets. The stable power feed allows for this accuracy.



It's an expensive investment but one high end BRW set saved from saw dust will cover the cost! It's all about making sets and not sawdust and orphan slices.
The Laguna power feeder is rated at variable speed starting at 0 feet per minute. But the reality is that until the feeder reaches 3 feet per minute it does not have enough power to push the wood through, so 3 feet per minute is the slowest speed. I figured a way to fool the feeder and allow a little slower if needed but for most wood it just pushes through as long as the blade is sharp. Like I said I can not hand feed at this speed, the blade won't take it. So that must mean the problem is in the irregular feed pressure and wobble coming from the human body.

I have sliced mahogany at high speed like 3 feet in 10 seconds, but it is a little spooky so I just run everything at 3.



Not wrong, just that the power feeder makes it faster. I have another video that I never put online that shows a long slice of Rosewood having 1mm sliced off, I try to put it online tonight.



If it gets warm it is too hot. It's easy to make a water mist cooling system and it makes a huge difference.
My saw has 6 HP and 201 inch blade and never bogs down.
If you are having problems with the saw slowing down it might be from the moments in time that you push a little to hard. Maybe you think you are keeping steady pressure but perhaps there are time cycles when you are actually increasing the feed rate by double without realizing it.



Yes you do! With all the beautiful rare wood you are slicing it can't continue to turn 15% extra into sawdust! One day very soon there will be no more of this precious wood....ever. ( Besides a power feeder is a pleasure to use like driving a high performance car)

_________________
Lance Peck

Hello Mr. Peck,

thank you so much for all you adiveses and comments.

1. Yes, I do not have any mist spraying system installed, again something to invest in...but since I am doing the resawing basically, till now, only as my hobby (...) I have to be carefull how much I invest, also regarding my girlfriend....you know . My Dust collection as actually quite strong, but I should close the bandsaw a bit better under the table....

2. I also think the Woddmaster stays cleaner, and is also easier to handle beacuase it has way less TPI. This is for me also the main differnece between these two blades, for my taste, the RK should be also available with lower TPI. Well, then the feed pressure would be a bit less, and I assume also the RK would not gunk up so fast.

3. 3mm for sides seems also OK for me, for the backs 3,5 sounds also doable, on the other hand side the differnece between 3,5 and 3,8mm ....well....not SO much . Of course I am aslo sometimes measuring the thickness of the block and then dividing it and calculating the bestethickness for the best yield, but sometimes you just will end up with a single slice...
BUT I know also some luthiers who will say 3,5 mm resawn backs are too thin, well, of course they are old-scholl overbuilders, but I am sure you know...the customers are always right (no they aren´t....)...happily I do not have to sell my wood....

4. I am already searching for a powerfeeder here in Europe, of course they are available, but I am trying to find a used one, or perhaps even built one myself....

5. Misunderstanding...the saw nevers slows down, just If I start pushing harder to get a faster feedrate, the blades starts to drift about 0,1 to 0,2mm. I will double heck the tracking and everything. Remember, here in europe , when having 3 phase electricity we a running on 380V by 50 HZ, so my 4 HP Motor is quite strong. Also the flywheels are really heavy and I think the saw is not underpowered, but I was already considering chaning the Motor to 7,5 KW, about 10 HP. We wills ee...

6. Mist system and powerfeeder....I have birthday soon . And you are right, since I am driving my beloved BMW I should also have apowerfeeder, that´s a good argument I think, too

Thank you for this nice and positive discussion, Cheers, Alex

Mist system...... can be very cheap to make.
I made mine with a cheap air brush paint sprayer purchased at the local hardware store for $10.
I'll try to find a picture of it later. It does appear it the video I tried to upload last night, the upload failed so I will try again tonight.

The air brush is the type with the little hand held nozzle with bottle attached.
Mount it about 6 inches in front of the top guide so it blows mist directly on the blade and guide as it enters the top guide.
The nozzle has a spray adjustment that controls the amount of water in the "mist".
Of course you need an air supply with a regulator to run about 40psi.
We actually just made this up to see how much cool air blowing on the blade would effect the blade temperature. It worked so well we just kept using it and never bothered to make any improvements.

Adjust the amount of water so that it just barely wets the guide but does not drip water. The idea is that as the air blows the water it evaporates and cools the air without wetting the wood. It works well. With oily woods increasing the amount of water seems to help keep the blade clean as well.

The little bottle of water will last perhaps 30 minutes.

One hour to make the mount bracket and you are running cool.

_________________
Lance Peck

Really, you do this as a hobby and you buy bandsaws that is about 3 stories tall? Hard to believe unless you or someone you know is extremely wealthy...

As for mist system, aren't there concerns of causing rust on the table, wheel, etc.? I seen someone resaw through about 8" of african blackwood and all he used was plain steel blade, and he brushed on what looks like mineral oil onto the blade before making the cut, and he slices through the wood very cleanly. Mind you it was a 36" bandsaw...

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

No concern with rust at all. basically what is hitting the blades and guides is cold moist air. All water evaporates on contact with saw and blade. When running extra water in the air it also dries before it enters the saw housing.

Here in Peru they pour diesel fuel on the blade to lubricate it but also their small saws have 4 inch wide blades.... but do we really want oil on tonewood slices?

The cooling is not needed to make the cut so we could also cut through thick hard wood without it. But using it extends blade life.

_________________
Lance Peck

@ Tai: Your are confusing here something!

this is my daytime work: viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=42576
this is my evening work (hobby...): viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=33690&start=100 and also https://picasaweb.google.com/115793185519493121307


With the big bandsaw...more news soon to come....
With my small bandsaw I am doing this resawing thing.

Everything clear ?

@ Mr. Peck:

Today i first cleand the blade with acteon, the blade was then preforming way better again. Tried to increase the feedrate by hand alot, worked out, but small wandering of the cut occured. Decided to take apart the complete upper and lower guides, clean the whole saw and guides, improve the dust collection under the table, and installing a mist system. So lots of work to do, resawing has to wait now....

A powerfeeder is very difficult to find used here. Found a new one which would work for about 1500 Euro, too expensive. Will probably built one by myself.

Thinking of replacing the guides...what would you prefer, Mr. Peck?:

Laguna / ACM Ceramic : http://acmitaly.it/deu/produkte/zubehor ... guna-space

or these german made from HEMA: http://www.hema-saegen.de/shop/fuhrunge ... em-fs.html

Now I want to know it....

Are you kidding me? I want to have one of these just to play with, never mind putting one on a bandsaw...

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled topic. cheers.

Here is a picture of how I used the air brush to blow cool mist on the blade.

_________________
Lance Peck

Alex, I'm going off topic a bit, but your rosewood spruce steel string guitar in your Picasaweb pictures is an absolute stunner!
Now, back to our regularly scheduled topic!

Alex

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I have no real complaints about Lagunas guides, they work well but are a little hard to adjust.

The German made guides look like they are much better made and they look like they would solve the adjustment problem.
If they are a ceramic material they win. They look more expensive.

I do like the straight ceramic blocks in the Laguna guides. I set the ceramics so the actually touch the blade, even though they say not to. ( I dont like rules!) With the ceramic just touching the blade most of the sawdust and any chips are shaved off the blade and dont pass through. I think this helps keep the blade from bouncing. Roller guides tend to suck in chips and debris and squeeze it past the blade, this must cause some effect.

Using Laguna's ceramic inserts you could ctually made similiar guides to theirs, they are pretty basic and simple

What is the cost of the German guides? I'm liking the way they look!

_________________
Lance Peck

Hello Mr. Peck,

here a link where you can check the prices, two sizes are availble, I think you could order directly from the company.

http://www.hema-saegen.de/shop/fuhrungen.html

HEMA is producing here in Germany, it is a high-end bandsaw specialized company. I am doubting this is ceramic, but they are using a special hardend steel or so.

We had lots of very good bandsaw producers here in Germany: Bäuerle, Kölle, Frommia, Panhans, Pehaka, Aldinger, Zimmermann just to name a few. Unfortunatelly most of them got valid, closed or are only dealing now with far east or italien made bandsaws.

I am always smiling when I hear about the quality of italien made bandsaws, here nobody would consider these as first class

Hema is more or less the only producerd who is still in business, but what they are doing is flawless. They are now also offering a cheaper producin line from italy or even far east, but their high end modells are still produced here in south germany, but expensive.

P.S. still searching my old airbrush equpment...must be somewhere...I always knew one day I will have a good use for it!!!

@ Alex: Thank you, it also sounds like a guitar ...I can not only do resawing, I can also build guitars


Cheers, Alex

How do these guides retrofit to existing bandsaws? Can I give them specs and they will be able to produce a custom guide like Carter?

These guides make Carter look cheap... I always wonder why do all German made things have to be so expensive...

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

@ tai:

I think they just fit, perhaps you have to work a little bit, but generally I think this is easy to do. Just contact them if you have any questions, they are very helpfull.

Regarding the price, Germany is expensive, live is expensive, work is expensive, so quality has to be high-end, otherwise we would be too expensive. Come to Germany and I will take you on the highway with a BMW and a Toyota, then you will understand the differnece

Cheers, alex

The problem is the lower guide on my bandsaw has severe size limitation. It is very close to the table providing maximum support but it's so difficult to use because of the way it's been designed. I am not even sure a new one will fit unless specifically designed for narrow space.

I been to Germany before and honestly, it's a nice place but I just wish things were less expensive. Food isn't bad but man living is expensive. It doesn't help that everyone else seems to care more about money than Americans, and even public toilet is expensive. In Taiwan recently the 7-11's have toilets, free of charge and sometimes provides toilet paper.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Here is the RK blade cutting Rosewood with the power feeder. The feed rate is faster than can be done by hand but as you can see the blade accepts the speed and cuts straight. In this video after slicing up a billet the last slice was about 2mm thicker than needed. Rather than sanding off the excess we sliced off the correct thickness leaving behind a perfect usable 1mm thick veneer.... zero waste.

You can also see the water mist cooler in the beginning of the video.

http://youtu.be/ainrOvTRGVA

_________________
Lance Peck

The price seems like not that much more than what I remember Laguna guides cost. So other than not having ceramic they look better. Look at the part that contacts the blade.... it looks to have a center space where you could install a ceramic disk if you wanted to should you decide that ceramics would run cooler.

_________________
Lance Peck

Very impressive system, for resawing , with the feeder and the cooling mist system!.I do a lot of resawing , but not as accurately. There is a co. here in MO that makes resaw bandsaws called baker, rick turner has one, and swears by them.

Killer setup!

Do you have to move the feeder for every cut? How do you assure consistent thickness from cut to cut? And what's the grit of the belt on the feeder?

Yes the feeder moves for every cut.

The feeder is mounted on Lagunas DriftMaster. To advance the feeder towards the blade you turn a crank. laguna has it designed to count the turns and always stop in the same position. But I always got mixed up and forgot where I was at! So I adapted a digital caliper to measure the distance. The caliper is stuck to the table with a magnet on one head end and the tail if the caliper is stuck to the feeder with a magnet. When you turn the crank the fence moves away and the caliper reads the distance it moves. So to move the fence the exact distance for the next slice I set the caliper to zero and crank until I have the thickness I want. (3mm is about 4 turns). It is extremely fast and accurate to .01mm measurements. It takes only a few seconds to set up for the next slice.
(I never told Laguna about this idea!)

The grit is really coarse, probably the coarsest available. (They used a premade sand belt not a special size) needs to be coarse to grip hard wood.

_________________
Lance Peck

Hi, I am back....had a few days off and spend it with my girlfriend, not the bandsaw...my real girlfriend

I took apart the guides, cleaned the whole saw and took the guides to a company which is for example honing and turning armored conduit and howitzer, no joke...there was a friendly guy who was interested in my needs, and today I could pick the guides up again.

They are quite flat and true now...

After assembling, adjusting and setting up everything as close and as straight as possible, I am happy with the results now.

I can increase feedrate quite a lot without any drift or whobbling or saw marks on the surface. Resawing is within tolerances as close as I can measure them. I am doing the backs now at 3,55mm. The sides I will do at 3.05mm.

So, what have I learned?

Clean your saw and guides more often than every 4 years....

cheers, alex

Ok...

I was happy too early, or the moment of happiness was not very long.

Anyhow, the RK is doing crazy stuff.

Thank you Lance for your fast response on my private message to you. Lets keep the discussion public, ok?

I have the following problem: when I start resawing a flitch, the blade starts suddenly drifting like hell. like nearly 2 mm drifting when cutting about ONLY 40mm into the flitch. I guess the blade is already dull? about 50 backs haven been cut till now, no sides yet.

I also sometimes get this ribbling, these waves in the cut, and i do not know why exactly. I adjusted everything, cleaned the blade with aceton, lowered the blade tension, higher the blade tension, tried to set the fence to the drift. nothing helped. it is only getting worse.

out of frustration i kicked the BRW away and picked some maple backs, the result was better, but also far away from perfect.

phoned with the manufacture, thez were super friendly and told me to send it back.

how can i test if the blade is dull or my setup is wrong? would be quite stupid to ship back a dull blade and complaining that it is not working....

I miss my woodmaster a bit...to be honest

The blade is probably dull.
You cant feel the lack of sharpness but the wandering blade is what happens when a blade gets dull.
The way to know for sure is to put on a sharp RK blade and see if it cuts straight.

50 back sets of BRW is probably reaching the limit of sharpness. You might try slicing a side billet to see how the cut is. Sometimes the dull blade will cut fine in the narrow slice but not in the wider back billet.

Like I said earlier when not using a power feeder the blade will dull faster.

One adjustment that you may not have thought to check is that the surface of the guides are exactly parallel to the tensioned blade. You don't want the guides to try to force the blade into alignment with them. You want the guides to support the blade as it hangs on the wheels.

So how many more back sets did you get from the billets as compared to what you would have gotten from the other blade?
If you even got one it probably was worth the cost of a new RK blade wasn't it?

_________________
Lance Peck

The blades can also be sharpened multiple times, up to 5 times on the RK according to Laguna.
So when you say 50 sets, is that 100 actual passes through the saw?

That sounds like a lot to me!

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

I realize that this isn't much help but those were the exact same problems I had with mine when it was brand new. That's why it hangs on the wall now.

Kevin Looker

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

To the knowledgeable resawers out there.Don/t want to hijack the thread, but maybe you can give me some suggestions. I have a 143in diemaster 2 lenox carbide 1/2in . blade 3 tpi on my minimax s-45 bandsaw .After about 6hrs of sporadic resawing .The blade will not cut a straight line. I rechecked and double checked everything .When I am resawing a 1in by 4in by 22in block of black walnut.The blade wanders, so that when I cut it for a 3.5mm cut the beginning of the the cut is 3.5mm then it gradually tapers to about 1.5mm at the end. My fence is on the left side of the table .Is this blade drift/wandering ??or is the blade just dull and needs resharpening. The blade was $155. .When I called industrial blade in L.A. They told me that the teeth are too small for them to resharpen ,That I would have to do it myself.Or maybe I could sharpen the teeth with a dremel and a diamond blade ??. Any thoughts or sugestions would be much appreciated thanks.