Menu
What's new

Where align the bandsaw blade?

Al Launier

Al Launier

Member
Messages
1,683
Location
Bedford, NH
I watched an impressive video of a Carter rep giving a demonstration at what appeared to be some sort of tool show. In the video he adamently stated NOT to center the blade on the center of the wheel. Instead, align the blade so that the deepest part of the gullet is centered on the crown of wheel. Doing this, and adjusting the side guides accordingly, will provide the best support to the blade at the crown, plus the alignment of the side guides will always be the same, regardles of blade width if all blades are set this way. This appears to be contrary to what I've read a number of times whereby the recommended practice is to center the blade with the center (crown) of the wheel.

His recommendation makes more sense to me. What do you experienced woodworkers recommend, especially for a G0555LX?
 
I watched that video and as I had just put a new blade on my 17" Griz BS I decided to give it a try. Removed the table and aligned the guides as he recommended, set the blade with the center of the gullet in the middle of the wheel. Put table back on and tried it out. Worked perfect.
 
Fred Belknap said:
I watched that video and as I had just put a new blade on my 17" Griz BS I decided to give it a try. Removed the table and aligned the guides as he recommended, set the blade with the center of the gullet in the middle of the wheel. Put table back on and tried it out. Worked perfect.
Click to expand...

Removed the table to adjust the guides? I just reach under. I change blades for different purposes and adjust the guides as required. I'm not sure I get how the guide adjustment for a 1/4" blade could be the same for a 3/4" blade with the gullets aligned to the same spot on the wheel? The difference in gullet depth between a 14 TPI and a 2-3 TPI blade would pretty well foul that approach(?).

bs bearings.JPG

The point I'm not making very well in the diagram is that the distance from gullet to tooth tip varies so guide bearings need adjusting. The thrust bearing isn't specifically mentioned so, maybe they mean you adjust that for larger blades and I'm wasting your time :eek:

Be that as it may . . . . ;). Bandsaw setup and alignment seems to have as many different camps and points of view as Dust Collection, Saw Stop and Festool :D. A Fine Woodworking article discounted the need for co-planer wheels and a lot of folks have jumped on that bandwagon. Some folks let the saw drift and alter their table and fence alignment to compensate. Some use tension gauges and run high tension, some use the flutter method. In the end if it works for you, it works.

I do align the gullets with the center of the wheels. My wheels are co-planer. I aligned the saw to cut straight and don't acknowledge drift as an acceptable condition. I generally set tension using the flutter method. I used to run an array of blades with varying tooth counts for various purposes. I now pretty much just stock 1/4" high and low tooth count blades for curvy stuff, 1/2" or 5/8" 2-3 tooth blades for resaw (don't see enough difference between 1/2" or large blades when resawing on my 17" machine to stock them:dunno:) and I use Highland Hardware's Woodslicer for thin-kerf / clean-finish cuts. The Woodslicer comes in handy when you need to squeeze an extra set of parts out of a dwindling material supply :).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top