Bandsaw Tips and Tricks for Woodworkers

welcome to make something with me Dave potato and today we're going to talk about setting up bandsaw plus a few of my favorite tricks and we're going to get this guy's style check it I only use two blades on my bandsaw 95% of the time I'm using a 3/16 of an inch for TPI skip tooth blade the TPI stands for teeth per inch and for teeth per inch works perfect for what I do and I find that anything less than 3/16 of an inch doesn't track well on the bandsaw the other 5% I'm using a half inch wood slicer resaw blade also from Highland woodworking and I only use this when I Reese on really tall pieces if I'm redrawing short pieces I'll just stick with this and that's why I use this blade 95% of the time [Music] most bandsaw problems come from the blade either having the wrong blade or having a dull blade and I would say most of the time it's having a dull blade now if you're looking at they have a bandsaw with this quick-release lever this makes life a lot easier my tension gauge on the back of my bandsaw does not work so I completely ignore it I'll show you how I tension the blade here in a second what I like to do is spin the wheel and turn the knob on the back here until my blade is centered and I don't want the blade centered I want the gullet that's the deepest part of the blade centered on the tire if you know for sure that your blade is on there nice and secure and it's centered turn it on real quick and then turn it off and see if the blade move [Music] I like to set my my guy to just behind the gullet then these two bearings here I'm going to turn the wheel with my hand and I want to just so it kisses and then back off just a hair and do the same with the other one and then the last is this thrust bearing here I don't want it touching me it's touching it and staying there I'm going to back off just a little bit that should spin when I put pressure on a blade but if I'm just turning the wheel shouldn't be touching so I'm gonna back off just a hair now we do the same exact thing for the guides below the table it's going to be a little hard to get a camera in there so you're just going to have to trust me that I'm doing the exact same thing a lot of people make a huge fuss about blade tension I don't I use the same tension for nearly all my blades but if you do want to check the tension the guides on the bandsaw is pretty much suck so I have a little pencil line on my square here and it's set back quarter of an inch so if I set my square on here I should be able to deflect my blade a quarter of an inch without too much pressure and I can see I'm just a little bit tight that's not that big of a deal so I'm just going to loosen this knob up top here there we go that's better and that's all you really need for blade saw tension don't worry about it too much I like to set the height of my guide to just above the workpiece anything too high and you have exposed blade which can be unsafe and then plus the blade doesn't have anything to register up against so keep everything to just just above the piece so now we're going to square this up and there's a couple knobs underneath my table here that I can make that adjustment it looks pretty square on both sides cut into a piece of wood stop it and if these two sides are parallel you should be able to flip it over and it should fit right into that curve and we are dead-on balls accurate dead-on balls accurate it's an industry time it's one of the templates from my fan saw box book and I've had some people say they have a hard time making this this corner radius right here so I'm going to show you what it takes to cut small curves when applying templates to my blanks here I use the spray adhesive and I use the light stuff so you can get this off this is the 100 light Loctite spray adhesive when making these tight turns right here it's kind of hard to explain but it's like an equilibrium of pushing the wood and turning the wood at the same time you can't just stop and then try to turn it because you're going to you're going to twist the blade it's kind of like driving a stick shift where you have the the equilibrium of the the clutch and the accelerator and and the gear shift it's that you'll you'll get a feeling for it after you do it across let's a blade do the work don't push it too fast otherwise you're going to have a hard time following your line [Music] [Music] like I said before most of your problems are probably either a dull blade or having too many teeth per inch Ciarra a little burning here that means my blades probably getting a little dull and so a nice sharp blade will help you cut those those corners there when cutting thick pieces of wood you want less teeth per inch because it needs to be able to remove that waste otherwise all that all that sawdust is going to get clogged in there and it's going to cause it to burn and it's going to drift outside the line so it looks like I need a new blade I'm just going to draw a silly shape here and we want to remove this part of the wood one of the ways to make this cut easier is to make some relief cuts which will relieve some of the pressure on the blade and that caused so much twisting so let's go make some relief cuts and then go cut this out [Music] all right now we're going to go make the cut and then these little pieces will fall off making the cut a lot easier and get some really tight radiuses with that [Music] when you're cutting really small pieces you might find that it wants to fall in this little trap right here uh so what you can do is just take a piece of scrap wood clamp that down now we can cut tiny pieces without worrying that it's going to fall in there not only does that work great for small pieces but then that gives the blade some support right above your cut and it gives you a zero clearance insert just like on available for me so now I'm going in my half inch wood slicer resaw blade and install on this is the exact same technique as before so we're not going to go over that again we're going to take this big piece of cherry here and I want to cut a thin veneer so I'm just going to draw a line I have this little gadget here from Meg switch it's got a couple magnets on there when I throw it on the table and turn these knobs it's nice and secure it's got these little these little bearings on here that we can use to guide our piece through here so we're just going to use my line here kind of set the position because there's only one point of contact on this fence and that's these little bearings here this will make up for any drift so that allows you to turn your wood and follow the line as you push it through the blade let the blade do the work don't push too fast let the blade do the work let the let the go to remove the waste if you push too fast it's going to want to drift and you're going to get some flex one of the reasons why you want any thicker blade for doing big reefs all jobs like this is because the thicker blade will flex a lot less it's okay to turn this while it's going through and pivot it along those bearings for the end here I'm going to pull it through on the other side just to keep my hands away from that huge blade and that came out perfect and it should that's a brand new blade I'm going to do the same thing again but I'm not going to use that resource I'm just going to draw a line and then I'm going to cut it out and follow it freehand just to show you that you don't need those gadgets they make life easier but it's not necessary so to keep my hands away from the blade I have these micro jig gripper blocks this is not sponsored I just like using these guys the little paddles that you get with your jointer also worked great what I like about these guys is it has these little these little things that catch on the wood and help you help you push it through and it's got a nice real grippy grippy surface here for getting a hold of your wood also it's got two flat bottoms which hold your piece vertically so whether you use these or the the pads from your jointer or whatever you want to use something to keep your hands away from the blade to guide that through [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have these two pieces veneers now there's a nice smooth side and then the rougher side made by the bandsaw blade I'm going to show you how to smooth that out over on the planer with this guy it's got to rough sides if you own a jointer you can run this through the jointer flatten it out and make more pieces because this is so thin you might not want to run this through the planer so we're just going to make a sled out of some plywood unfortunately all I have is really nice walnut plywood booooo-whoo right so you work with what you got so I'm just going to use this piece of one a plywood and I have this sandpaper with the adhesive back you could also use sandpaper and spray adhesive and then just going to throw that on there and that's got some good grip and we'll run this through the planer we can make this as thin as we want it [Music] there we go look up then that is perfect you can use that for veneer so this is the fence that came with my bandsaw here and a lot of times I'm using this fence to cut small pieces to make them nice and straight and I get called out a lot because I have all this open blade here but I can't help it because this fence is so tall that I can't I can't lower that anymore on the small pieces it's just kind of the disadvantage that sense if I move it out this way then I can come down much further but for the small pieces the bearing or that the guides here hit it nothing I can do except always know where the blade is always know where your fingers are and be safe I get asked all the time what's the first big woodworking tool I should purchase and for some it's going to be the table saw and for some it's going to be the bandsaw there's a lot of things you can do on the bandsaw you can do a lot of rip cuts and cross cuts on the bandsaw but you're going to get a much cleaner cut on the table saw I could only have one big tool in the shop how'd it go with the bandsaw older bands halls have little knobs on here that you can turn instead of using the little allen key I've thought about and I haven't done it yet I was thinking about doing it for this video but we got real lazy is to take a little allen wrench sit you know and then cut it off like about right there and then make a little wooden knob you could probably use a dowel drill a little hole in there epoxy that in and then maybe hot glue that engineer and then you have these permanent knobs on there you don't have to use a lip down key I don't just the thought has anybody done anything like that if so let me know in the comments down below I'm not an expert at the bandsaw this is just the things that I've gathered throughout the years I do have a book on making bandsaw boxes with the bandsaw I'll have the link to this down below there's a couple other resources that you might want to check out Jimi dress that has a amazing bandsaw tips and tricks video and then there's the classic video it's like eight years old now the Alex sod grass demonstration where he goes over setting up a bandsaw I have links to both of those videos down below I highly suggest you to check them how I like to thank my top patreon peeps of sweetness and Jonathan Jacobs Moses Jason Hughes George Ann reef called brink Gunn Rossiter Adam Beckwith bill deal Brian McKnight Chad Forrester and Timothy Allen's gonna support me in my shelf visit patreon.com slash judo I'm having a meet up Saturday June 3rd from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 10:00 prep company here in Toledo Ohio there's going to be door prizes and I'm going to have books with me we can do some sign books and there's going to be some demonstrations so if you're in the area come say hello if you're not familiar with ken crafter my local hardwood dealer it's a family-owned businesses where I get all my wood for all my projects so if you can make it I'd love to hang out with you that Saturday June 3rd from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. I'd like to thank my buddy Matt Taylor for painting my bandsaw if you want to check him out I have some links down below he's one of my favorite artists and he's located here in Toledo Ohio I want to paint all my tools in the shop every tool I want to be a canvas a different color maybe by a different artist and you know just I have a fun unique shop thank you Matt you did an awesome job I love it I love it I love it all right folks that is it as always be safe have fun stay passionate and make something [Music]

Channel: Make Something

Views: 275,535

Keywords: bandsaw tips and trick, bandsaw, how to, how-to, resawing, bandsaw blades, bandsaw setup, band saw, band saw setup, band saw tips, band saw tips and tricks, bandsaw tips, woodworking, woodworking tips, woodworking projects, woodworking videos, diy, make, woodworker, wood tips, woodworking lesson, woodworking how to, woodworking diy, wood working, wood work, woodworking tutorials, do it yourself (hobby), make something

Id: QbJBQYDrF5M

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2017