@lorenzojose
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I have a couple of those chalk boxes and the item that stops the “leaking” is some felt pads that the line passes through. It’s possible to slow the leaking considerably by just turning the pads upside down so the line has a new surface to run over and by shimming them closer to each other.
For your issue break the chalk box in with the ultra thin line( I assume by Tajima). You can make the pads work better if you shim them with something like cereal box cardboard until you get the effect you want.. if the felt is too worn you will have to make replacement pads from felt glued up to thickness with rubber cement. Cut it to shape with a razor blade or really sharp chisel. You use to be able to buy new pads, but I think those days are long gone. Really clean and fine work generally requires a person at each end of the line and a small flick of the line away from the work to get loose chalk off the line.You might want to consider buying a Tajima chalk box that will probably work better and has the advantage that they are geared to allow faster reeling if you are doing a lot of layout work. They are available with different thickness lines preloaded. You will never fully eliminate the excess powder.
For really fine lines for furniture work the Japanese use lines in boxes that are loaded with ink, not chalk. Their disadvantage is inky hands. Tajima also makes those boxes and ink in different colors. Furniture layout in Japan is done with those boxes.
Great refurbishment. Nice choice on the tote pattern and well executed. It even looks like you were able to save some of the etching.
Hi.
Two things to look into before you Spring for a new machine. The Carter guides are very nice, but they will do nothing to correct for drift. Even they tell you to align the blade without the guides engaged.1) the riser Block addition raises red flags. It may be that the upper and lower wheels are no longer properly aligned. If your alignment problems started when you installed the riser, you may have your culprit.
There are several tutorials on the Interwebs on aligning the wheels and tires. Two places to look are from Carter YouTube offerings and Michael Fortune, also on YouTube. One often overlooked adjustment is aligning the lower wheel assembly with the upper one with shims. Soda cans make good shim stock.2) drift is often just a misaligned table. Most are held on to the saw with four bolts trough oversized bolt holes. Back off the bolts a turn or so and bump the table in the corrective direction, tighten the bolts back up and try again.
Michael Fortune, who has 11 bandsaws in his shop at last count, has a video specifically about drift. Give it a try before you give up on your saw .Ok, three things.
Put a new high quality blade on your saw. It’s very easy in a moment of carelessness to degrade the tooth line on one side of the blade. You can try stoning the other side by placing a stone ( I use an old diamond plate ) on the side of the blade and turning the wheel backwards a couple turns by hand to reduce the set a little, but if that doesn’t work, put a new blade on. It’s a mistake to use a blade too long. They are cheap and disposable unless you are a masochist.
Drift is not a reason to replace a band saw. I’ve never seen a saw that couldn’t be corrected. My current saw is pushing 95 years old without losing alignment with one bearing replacement in that span.
Mathew,
Your frog isn’t defective or anything. That was the design of the frog assembly between 1878 and 1904 ( or 1902).
There was no forward machined area for the frog to sit on. I have a 1904-Ish number 4c that is made the same way.
It works fine, but is fiddler to Mount correctly. Subsequent methods have a rib to help align the frog.Patrick’s supertool site has some info on four of the frog mounting methods Stanley used over the years.
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan1.htmTry turning the frog a bit before you tighten down the 2 frog mounting screws. Sometime what appears to be square isn’t.
I fortunately just bought some Johnson’s so I’m probably good till I croak.
But another wax to consider is Briwax , which I tend to use on antique furniture. It requires more buffing to get a sheen and is a more satiny sheen than Johnson’s. It also comes in tinted varieties which will hide scratches better ( I have brown and black). I sometimes use tinted if I want to accentuate open grains. Just make sure to first use a coat of the clear first. Applied directly to raw wood, the tinting is pretty strong.You can use a bevel tool instead of a square and adjust it so measurements off both sides of the iron agree.. then sharpen to a line drawn on the iron at that setting.
But replacement irons aren’t that expensive if you aren’t buying boutique irons. . A new iron with parallel sides will save you that grief every time you sharpen.
Here are some thoughts that might help.
I was going to suggest you try hide glue like OBG also It has a 30 minute open time and the wood will slide better. Claims have been made tha it gives better full coverage in the joint than PVA in very tight joints. Use it warmed up per directions and the joint will go together more easily.
I just warm it with in a bath of hot water out of the tap ( 125° F or so – 52°C). Lastly, it is reversible with heat and moisture. For a longer open time, warm the wood.
The downside is you have to keep your project in clamps longer.
If you can’t find OBG, Titebond’s hide glue works ok too, or make your own by salting hot hide glue. Plenty of info on the web.But that doesn’t solve the issue of the wood swelling before you complete the glue up. Work quickly and it won’t let the water in the glue time to enter the wood with either type of glue.
If you want to stay with PVA, try Titebond 3. It has a longer open time than original or type 2 ( 8-10 min vs 3-5 min) Titebond says you can thin it 10% with little loss of strength.
And while a joint fit that won’t come apart even before glueing is impressive, it isn’t always a practical way to size your joints. With larger work. Consider a thou or two allowance for glue in the joint. It will still be plenty strong enough. Try wetting the tenon and then putting the joint together without glue to judge when the joint is too tight. Shaving the tenon is a great job for a shoulder plane. A router works also. Sandpaperglued to a board works in a pinch.
I’m not sure what you are asking.
First off, I don’t know what filing rip cuts progressively means. You file saw teeth, not rip cuts.
Do you mean you file your saw teeth as rip saws with progressively steeper pitch along the saw plate from toe to heel, or what?.Second, I don’t think paul said that a saw dedicated to cross-cutting should be filed as a rip saw. I think he meant that for general purpose use it doesn’t make a lot of difference in small tooth sizes. A rip pattern in small sizes will be adequate for most cross-cutting and is a little easier to file. Tage Frid said the same thing 50 years ago.
But if your goal is to have a dedicated cross cut saw, I think you should file it as a crosscut saw like several centuries of craftsmen have done before you. The cross cuts will be faster and smoother and with a little less effort. It’s only a little more involved that filing a rip pattern. You just have to keep track of which direction each alternating tooth is filed. And you might want to use a slightly finer file to get an adequate gullet.
Here is a video by Paul on filing a saw as a crosscut saw
And there is a Bad Axe saws treatise on filing, which I think is invaluable in explains your options.
Just Google “ bad axe filing “ for that. Your likely first hit will show you geometries for Rip, crosscut, and Hybrid patterns.But if you want to file all your fine saws with a rip pattern, , you can do that also. Just file your saws with a more rake, say 10° or 15° or so for the saw you are going to only crosscut with.
Saws will start easier if you put a little more rake in the teeth for the first inch or two. Saws with the front face of the teeth dead vertical will be harder to start in crosscut situations.-
This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by
.
-
This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by
-
This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by
-
This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by
Some things to consider.
I concur you should try a plane with a 55° frog before you invest in one.
A 55° frog makes a smoother considerably harder to push, especially with some hardwoods. If you feel you must have a 55° frog I suggest you consider something like a #3 plane with the narrower iron. You will be taking such thin shavings in problem grain the size of the plane doesn’t matter much. A small plane is actually and advantage for fine smoothing. A smoother’s office is to follow the undulations of the board you have flattened with a longer plane , not to flatten. If you look at the size of a #80 scraper, for example, the bed is quite small compared to most any plane.
99% of smoothing can be done with a sharp iron bedded at 45°. A card scraper or #80 scraper plane will handle the rest. And I’d consider a #3 or #4 before I got two Jack plane length tools. If you are a small person, choose the smaller plane.A low angle plane is NOT necessary for a shooting ( chute) plane. If you look at planes made for the purpose from Veritas, Lie Nielsen, and Stanley, they all have 45° frogs. What they do have is a skewed iron to reduce the effort.
But lots of folks use traditional Bailey style planes. My preference is a Bailey 5 1/2 ( old style with the 2 1/4” iron). It has enough mass to power through any hardwood end grain without being too tiring to use, and has a long enough nose to register the work easily. Before I found the 5 1/2 I used a #6 for years. What is more important that the few degrees lower presentation is a really SHARP iron and thin shavings, which also reduce the effort involved.
One of my dream planes has always been a proper shooting plane ever since I used one 50 years ago, but the price of these things has always risen faster than my willingness to pay for one. Over the years I learned to tune a less expensive plane and they work just fine. You notice Paul just uses a #4 Bailey when he uses a shooting board.Also, a 45° frog will very easily shoot 45° cuts. That isn’t much harder than normal planing.
Also, take care to get the “hang” ( angle of presentation ) at an ergonomic angle. Often that’s so the thrust of the stroke is directed approximately to the center of the tooth line.
It depends on a couple things.
1) was the handle well attached ( no slop) when you bought it? If so, consider leaving well enough alone.
2) if you drilled holes to match the handle is there enough steel around the holes near the old hole locations? Mark the plate with a sharpie when the plate is in the desired location. Then remove the handle and see. If the old and new bolt locations are very close, consider shortening the saw plate and brass back a fraction of an inch. ( remove brass on the back equally from both ends to keep any logo centered.)
I suspect what you may have is a replacement to the original handle, which often had just two bolts on smaller saws.
It depends on a couple things.
1) was the handle well attached ( no slop) when you bought it? If so, consider leaving well enough alone.
2) if you drilled holes to match the handle is there enough steel around the holes near the old hole locations? Mark the plate with a sharpie when the plate is in the desired location. Then remove the handle and see. If the old and new bolt locations are very close, consider shortening the saw plate and brass back a fraction of an inch. ( remove brass equally from both ends to keep any logo centered.)
I suspect what you may have is a replacement to the original handle, which often had just two bolts on smaller saws.
Look a the kerf in the handle. When the two holes line up, is the saw plate all the way in the kerf?
Barry,
Keeping the blade clean is more than finding a magical spray or oil to stop buildup, though lubrication does help. I don’t think it matters much which lubricant you use as long as it stays on the blade. That one reason you have seen chain saw bar oil mentioned. It sticks to metal well for a relatively long time ( in the minutes time scale).
Several factors come into play, such as the type of wood and wetness of it you are cutting, the blade pattern, type, and size, the surface feet per minute the blade is geared to, the extraction and blade cleaning during running, etc. IMO the main cause of resin buildup is heat. Bear with me.With your case using pine, there are some special considerations. Use a 3-4 TPI count. It will clear the wood from the kerf faster. Use a skip tooth pattern.
The resin buildup isn’t all due to actually cutting the pine. If you run at a high sfpm you can cut quicker, but it’s at the expense of an increase in heat buildup, all things being equal. Things that run fast get hotter from friction, which in turn causes the resin in the pine sawdust to melt and get gummy. You can reduce the heat by running slower and by lubricating, but also by having an airflow over the blade. Proper extraction of sawdust is best done with a high airflow volume and speed right under the cutting area. Extractors that just suck from an enclosed large volume space aren’t as effective. There are videos on the webs on setting up your extractor to do that. Rob Cosman shows an easy conversion here:A bonus of this system is that the high velocity/ high volume cools the blade.
The lubricating oil I use is just mineral oil with a small amount of Bar oil added to make it stick better to the steel. Modern bar oil is just canola oil based, so it isn’t toxic. It’s the same formula I use for my rag in a can, so it’s nothing magical. I just run the blade backwards by hand while holding the Rag in a can against the wheel, but any method will work.
I use urethane tires and haven’t perceived any harm to the tires in the couple decades I have used them. I can’t speak to other types of tires. One consideration is that the blade will slip on old, glazed over tires. That is another source of heat from friction.As to speed ( sfpm — surface feet per minute of the blade) it depends a bit on the size of your bandsaw. The blade needs a chance to cool before it engages the wood on the next rotation, so small bandsaws need to run a bit slower to allow that to happen. If you run fast, the blade has less time to cool before it has to cut again. I’d also run a bit slower on pine, since it is so easy to cut with a sharp blade. There are charts on the internet to match blade speed to saw size, but the lower end of the scale is maybe 2600 sfpm for a small (12”) saw and around 4000 sfpm for an 18” saw. Large Industrial saws run faster. (A couple hundred sfpm +- is of little consequence)
Again, the faster speeds require more cleaning. It’s part of the trade off to cutting faster. My saw is a 14” saw and I run most cuts at 2600 sfpm partially because the saw runs smoother at lower speeds . Casting tolerances weren’t as tight in 1920 as they are now. I’m not in an industrial setting anymore, so the slower cutting rate doesn’t bother me. It’s still way faster than hand work. Smooth cuts are more important to me.
And in addition to a high speed airflow over the blade I’d consider a strategically placed brush to wipe the lower tire and keep sawdust from collecting on it. Less sawdust constantly contacting a warm blade means less resin to transfer to the blade. You’ll find methods of doing this on the webs, as well as commercial add on systems. Even so, clean the lower tire from time to time.
And tuning the blade helps a lot. Only using sharp blades reduces heat buildup. Dull blades are less efficient, and that also leads to heat buildup.
And in addition to sfpm or the blade, there is the speed at which you feed the wood through the saw. Working slower will allow the sawdust to clear the kerf better, which also reduces friction.Setting the blade guides properly also helps. Many people set the guides too tight, another source of heat and friction. The blade should not contact anything when it’s not actually cutting.
Consider cool blocks or other low friction guides. My saw is an antique and was designed for guides made of oily woods like cocobolo or lignum vitae infused with pertolatum. It works quite well and is quieter than steel or ball bearing guides. Actually any infused porous hardwood works.
And get high quality blades. They will be set more uniformly which eases friction and gives a smoother cut. I stone my blades when I install them in the saw the first time. It’s as easy as lightly holding a fine stone or diamond paddle against each side of the blade wile MANUALLY turning the blade backwards one Rotation of the blade for each side. DO NOT HAVE THE POWER CONNECTED WHEN YOU DO THIS. ITS A HAND POWERED PROCEEDURE. Also stone the back edge of the saw blade where it contacts the thrust guide for less friction and longer blade life.
Hope that helps.
-
This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by
