Share your experience with bandsaws

+1 to this topic. I’m just about to look for one as well … into … garage workshop. Could you please accentuate what are the important things?

I’ve also been looking into getting a first bandsaw. My takeaway from extensive reading is that the minimum size is 14” for it to be approaching a lifetime, or even longterm, tool. Assuming the intention is resawing, I hasten to add.

My impression is that below 14” I will be so put off it that I’ll either give up bandsawing, or immediately start shopping for a larger machine.

The real good thing seems to be to go above the *basic* 14” ones and get cast iron wheels (inertia!) and a reasonably powerful (2hp or so) motor. I think with that spec it’ll truly be a buy once thing. I’ve seen them for sale 30 or 40 years old, so it can be a good investment I reckon.

On the other hand for small resawing in pine etc for boxes and sub-furniture-sized stuff, I’m sure a basic 14” model is a heck of a lot better than nothing, especially with a good blade carefully set up. I’m still on the fence 🙂

Just my tuppence worth, hopefully others with actual experience will be along soon!!

My plan is to use my cheapy Ryobi shop vac and attach it to the bandsaw dust extraction port, plus wear a mask.

I have recently bought a record AC400 air cleaner (briefly discussed on here under the general woodworking discussion section), so I may vacate the workshop after extensive resawing and leave that to improve the air quality. Measure this up before buying remotely as I did: it’s a LOT bigger than the photos make it look!

I used to use a cheap craftsman shop vac with my bandsaw and it worked fairly well, got a good amount of dust but it didn’t have a conventional air filter so it it blew some dust out of the back of it. I upgraded to a more powerful vacuum with a good filter and found with big projects it ends up clogging the filter and causing problems.

I’m considering picking up a cyclone dust separator thing, my understanding is you put it between your machine and shop vac and it forces the dust to settle out in a container and not go through the shop vac but I haven’t tried that yet. Might be something to consider

My wife allowed me to splurge a little over a year ago and get a 14″ Laguna, and I absolutely love it. My hand resawing was pretty sketchy – I’d lose a lot of width from the wood because I didn’t cut right to the line. I’d allow a good 1/8-1/16″ because I didn’t have confidence in my ability to saw straight, so a lot of waste and a lot of planing, and I’d avoid projects that I couldn’t do with 3/4″ lumber.

The bandsaw has been awesome, for both ripping and resawing. It’s been easy to set up and tune, and straightforward to use. I’ve got and small cyclone dust separator and a basic shop vac hooked up to the dust ports, and haven’t had a dust problem at all. I’ve been able to work on a lot more projects now that I don’t have to spend so much time and effort on prepping the stock – if comes off the bandsaw a lot more square and true than I could get with my old Disstons. I’ve got no desire to get any other power tools, but this one has been a Godsend.

I’m new to it…

I got mine, a Record Power BS300E in January (2020)… mostly funded with money for a big birthday in December, and selling some of the surplus tools I’d bought since becoming a “sellerite”! (Who needs 20 saws?)

I wanted it primarily for dimensioning, mostly resawing/ripping.

I have to say that I’ve been disappointed somewhat, overall…

Changing the blade takes ages…. Well actually swapping the blade out doesn’t take too long, but the subsequent tweaking does.

There is no “quick release” for the tension, and the tension knob is/was really stiff. (dismantle and grease cured that)
The upper wheel tracking adjustment was really stiff as well. I’ve now dismantled and greased that which has helped a lot… but it was so stiff that the plastic knob on the adjuster broke. I’ve cured that also!
The supplied bearing gubbins is a real faff to adjust; The top ones aren’t parallel to each other, and the lower ones are almost impossible to see to adjust back/forward properly.
The scale for width isn’t accurate, easy to read, or adjustable.
The mitre fence isn’t “snug” in it’s guide track, so can’t be relied upon.
The fence can’t be easily removed once set up… you have to set the table to 45 degrees to get enough clearance to do so

Allen keys are supplied, but you need different sizes for difference tasks… easy to get in a muddle.

Also, I had a major problem last week… Key holding the pulley wheel on the motor shaft had come off. According to the specs it should have been 35mm long… it was only 20 mm.

Record Power support sent parts to me… and I was able to fix it.

But what is really disappointing is that even if we weren’t in the current “lockdown” Record Power wouldn’t have fixed it for me anyway. Although there is a “5 year guarantee” if it goes wrong “we don’t fix it… we’ll send you the parts but you have to fix it yourself”

That can’t be right can it!

Having said all that, with a good quality blade, and care taken in setting up, good results can be achieved.

For extraction I bought a Record Power extractor, at the same time. It’s the cheapest one they do, and it works well… but boy it’s noisy!!
The extracting seems to be better when the sawing is better… with the poorer quality blades the sawdust particles are bigger and don’t get down to where the extraction is. This is not a major problem however.

I’ve never had one before, so I can’t compare with anything else. I don’t think, for over £700 altogether, I’ve been expecting too much!

Regards,

Matt