Curves on the Bandsaw

the bandsaw really is our most flexible power tool not only kind of can it cut nice straight lines ripping cross-cutting you can resaw it but it does give you that curve flexibility whether it be you are roughing out a bowl blank or just cutting fine scrolling work all that can be done on the bandsaw fairly easily and safely but actually cutting the curves does take some practice and there are a few tricks to make it a little bit easier now I do have two tip videos already out and number seventeen is a more important one because it tells you some hand tool hand positioning technique so you won't hurt yourself on the bandsaw if you haven't checked that one out I do suggest you go check it out awesome now the first thing you me that I understand is you are limited by the blade you are using just like a sports car versus a limousine a little Miata can turn a tighter corner than a big huge long extended Hummer no that doesn't mean there aren't tricks to get around that one so if you're like me you generally just leave a half inch three skip three tooth blade on it for all your roughing work and stuff because you treat those bandsaw as a roughing tool then you can make tight curves and rough shapes with the bandsaw and then refine it with a hand tool for your joinery or your furniture pieces the bandsaw to me is a rough cutting tool and I'll try to show you some tips to use it for the tighter stuff but if you're doing a lot of scrolling work a smaller blade will work out here's why if you have a very large blade it's got teeth and then it's got the long thickness right there well it can't turn a curve roughly the size of its blade - the kerf see the kerf is gonna hit that blade right there and come forward wear a tighter a smaller blade will have the same problems but that blade won't bottom out in the middle of the curve and that's what you're dealing with so let's work around that on the bandsaw today so I've drawn some curves on this board I have a nice concave and a convex and then I have a squiggle all the way around the key thing you need to remember is generally when you're laying stuff out for bandsaw use especially free handing it with your hands the line is part of the wood that you want to keep so we're going to try and snug up right next to this line now these are 90 degree cuts on this one generally I find that to be the best and if I do need to add an angle or a curve to a later day I'll do that with hand tools so here we go I've set my fence up my shield up so I got just a little bit of the blade coming through and it's not gonna bind up underneath and I'm gonna use my hands in the finger fence position just like I told you earlier but the main trick that you need to think about is to not stare at your front tire every single new bicycle or motorcycle ride it seems like they focus right down at their front tire that means that everything else coming up into them it just happened so fast they have no reaction time and things get really hectic and they cramp up and they stress out on a crash and that's especially true with mountain bikers I mean you really want to look down the trail you know where your front tire is it's not going to move unless you move the handlebars so by looking down the trail or looking through the corner you can see where you want to go and everything kind of slows down and you can anticipate stuff it makes things a lot easier well when people are cutting curves on the bandsaw so much time so many times do they focus right on the teeth and that's already too late things are too happening too fast there you need to look back to where you want to go with the blade and let your peripheral vision understand where the teeth are cutting the blades not gonna move but the board will so that's what we need to focus on so we're not cutting this curved yes I will make sure that the first tooth engages just like I go on this right where I want to but then I'm actually looking over in this area and making sure that it's feeding into the blade that I can see the curvature reaching towards a blade that's that way everything happens slowly and easily for me so let me turn on the vacuum I'll show you what I'm talking about [Music] worry about it so the salt teeth are actually set to this either side you can actually use that to advance so I can can actually come over here and lay the board right on the side and if I notice right as it engages I'm yes I'm starting at the teeth at that point the white starts to come away and then I can bring my focus down here and feed it into that side of the tooth I'm not actually pressing against the blade sideways I'm coming into the front of the blade with that angle I'm doing it's the focus of the curve that I'm working on staring up here and focusing of entering that curve into the teeth now that side of the tooth action is also how I'm going to get rid of the center section I like to come in and remove it by lines recesses and then use the size of the teeth get to clean it up [Music] [Music] now a good idea to practice this kind of technique is just find a piece of scrap wood and make some squiggly lines and then have one section that you're gonna remove and then just kind of cut them all off I like to start out with a gentle curve giving me a chance to really focus on my concave and convex curves and then as I come closer I have to use a lot of these other techniques whether it be using the side of the teeth or hogging it out going in removing waste to get the tighter curves [Music] exactly not something you should do a lot if you haven't been playing around with it but you can actually cut ever so slightly cut playing off a little bit by going backwards on the blade you just need to make sure that you don't catch on the blade and pull it off the rollers so I'm basically using the backside of the teeth that are splayed either way [Music] so there you go a few tips and techniques for cutting the curves on the bandsaw take an account the blade you're using don't try and cut to title to radius focus on the wood entering the blade don't focus right where the blade is cutting you can see that in your peripheral vision focus on the path to entry then commit cut tighter curves by focusing on relief cuts and Whittle it away and if you miss your line and you need to wiggle a little bit off and kind of plane it back you can do that one off the back of the set of the tooth of the blade so go out to the chopped experiment try it out I love that practice will return a lot of good results later on down the road so for today's bonus I want to talk about Patrick's blood and gore website know it's a cool website but before we do that on if this is your first time here please like favorite subscribe do all those social medias they really do help us out and if you've been getting some benefit from this series or some of my longer series so once I'm more known for doing please considering visiting our website wart effort com not only have it do I have a lot more content there but I can show you different ways you get patronize us so that it helps fund us making these videos for you so Patrick leech in a sub section of his superior super tools to me super tool comm website has written up basically a history of the Stan Lee claims all the numbers I numbered ones you can go through and it's really cool if you have a plan you kind of want to understand when it was made was it made in the late 1800s or 1900s what are the different features in changing in the different generations of them and even allow the specialty and kind of experimental planes that Stanley made are listed here and it's a great way to waste a little time learning a little history all the nuances Amy kind of make the planes and the tools you own that you discover all the details about them work a little bit more to you visit it visit it's Patrick blood and gore webpage or website within super tool calm and Patrick runs kind of a newsletter where he sells victus tools that he finds and restores check it out a lot of fun

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 60,865

Keywords: wortheffort, woodworking, powertool, power tool, bandsaw, band saw, techique, techiques, DIY, skill, curve

Id: U-ZNpiLaXfQ

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2018