Reply To: Band saw
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Bandsaws are incredibly useful tools. I’m on my second – the first was an 18″ saw (Record Power BS450 – not made any more) that I got a great deal on but found too big, so downsized to a 15″ (Scheppach Basato 4). If you’re going to use it for dimensioning components from large pieces, I’d suggest a 14″ or larger saw, unless you really are never going to be cutting anything thicker than 1 1/2″, in which case a smaller model will be fine.
If you’re really ok with limiting yourself to small cuts, Record Power machines are pretty decent. Startrite are now owned by Record Power, I think. I’d put a wager on you wanting to upgrade to a larger model shortly after getting the saw though! They are tremendously versatile. If you were making Paul’s scoops, you could use the saw to remove all the waste, doing only the gouging of the mouth, and shaping by hand. If you were making a run of them, you could batch them and I reckon you could rough out a scoop in two or three minutes if you had good templates and got the process perfected. You could then spend as much time as you wanted on the fun part – shaping by hand!
eBay can be a bit of a lottery and I’d strongly advise going to see a saw before buying it. You can sometimes get a deal with the seller as well if there aren’t any bids already.
The problem with getting a larger saw and using it to do big cuts is dust collection. Resawing, or even ripping long pieces of 2″ thick stock, produces a staggering amount of dust. I had a large collector but had to downsize that too because it was a similar size to the saw itself. It doesn’t move as much air but still works ok. I also have an air filter that I run while using the saw, and a while after, to remove the really fine particles from the air. I have my work computer in my shop so have to keep the place pretty clean, and wrap the machine in a large bin bag and tape it up to stop dust getting into the fans.
Once you factor in dust collection, blades, hearing/breathing protection, van hire if you get a bigger saw, etc, you can run up a pretty decent bill. A simple shopvac type collector will run you £100. Decent blades aren’t cheap (tuffsaws.co.uk are a great source) for a 14″ or larger saw. Moving larger bandsaws is hard work – they’re heavy and tall.
I guess my main point is that you’ll find the tool so useful you’ll want a larger one, and that’s when they become quite an investment. It’s worthwhile though. I picked up a couple of pine joists at the weekend (pic attached) – around 9m of 220x75mm, for £50 plus diesel and three hours in the car to collect. I’m not sure what I’ll use them for yet (or when I’ll get the time!) but I’m stocked up for a while and won’t think twice about cutting components out on the bandsaw. Bar stools, boxes, tables, scoops… plenty of useable timber on these! I’ll do all the crosscuts by hand, then all rips on the bandsaw. Without the bandsaw, I’d be much more apprehensive about it and probably wouldn’t have bought the joists!
Hope this somehow helps! Let me know if you’ve got any questions.
George.