Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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I have zero fear of bandsaws. Super safe. Grew up using them. I had to be MUCH older before my dad let me fuck around with a table saw.
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Woodworking
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I have zero fear of bandsaws. Super safe. Grew up using them. I had to be MUCH older before my dad let me fuck around with a table saw.
Siliconemelons
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Because the topic is still at hand…
Wife found the finger cut picture after it was cleaned out, then after they put the scab dust on it.
Spoilered for sensitive friends
But yes normal sized band saws are generally safer used properly than table saw even used properly unlike what i did
Wife found the finger cut picture after it was cleaned out, then after they put the scab dust on it.
Spoilered for sensitive friends
But yes normal sized band saws are generally safer used properly than table saw even used properly unlike what i did
Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Erm, this is kinda oxymoronic. A resaw cut is just a rip cut across the wider dimension. A bandsaw is the primary tool for cutting veneers and no one would accept 1/16th plus or minus 1/8. I think you need to get your saw tuned properly.
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Veneers are definitely not cut or made using bandsaws. They are cut using knives where they peel the veneer from a log in the making of plywood or use "slicer" machines to make fine wood veneer from hardwoods. A bandsaw is used primarily for resawing and cutting rough shapes in wood. And sure, with the right blade and jigs you can make thicker veneer as its still a resawing operation but its not how they make veneer. And you will still get drift and a rough surface therefore you have to cut the veneer thick, usually to like 1/8th inch and use jigs in your planer to then plane it and then drum sand it to final thickness.
So which is it? Yes, shop-made veneers are thicker and rougher than commercial but they definitely don't have 1/8" unavoidable error in the cuts. If there were always that much deflection it would be impossible.
Here's Stumpy Nubs making cuts that are straight to within the set of his blade's teeth.
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Commercial veneers are made down to 0.020 inches using continuous roll slicers. This is the thickness of about 3 pieces of 20lb bond printer paper.
Shop made veneers are usually anywhere between 1/16" and 3/16" (0.0625-0.1875) which is 3 to 9 times thicker. While you can make them on a table saw, if you want your veneer wider than 3 inches with no burn, you need to use a bandsaw. It is very possible to do this if your bandsaw is set up properly. Note that many cheap bandsaws are so far out of true that it might be very difficult to tune them well enough to get a consistent cut.
Also, it is possible to hand saw veneers as thin as 1/8 or maybe thinner. I have personally done this on a smallish scale, though its tedious. Once sawn, you can hand plane the veneer to maybe 1/16 if your plane is sharp and you have a good jig. Paul Sellers demonstrates this in one of his vids on youtube.
TL;DR: don't fight wood bros, there are different ways to veneer based on different skills and equipment. All are valid.
Shop made veneers are usually anywhere between 1/16" and 3/16" (0.0625-0.1875) which is 3 to 9 times thicker. While you can make them on a table saw, if you want your veneer wider than 3 inches with no burn, you need to use a bandsaw. It is very possible to do this if your bandsaw is set up properly. Note that many cheap bandsaws are so far out of true that it might be very difficult to tune them well enough to get a consistent cut.
Also, it is possible to hand saw veneers as thin as 1/8 or maybe thinner. I have personally done this on a smallish scale, though its tedious. Once sawn, you can hand plane the veneer to maybe 1/16 if your plane is sharp and you have a good jig. Paul Sellers demonstrates this in one of his vids on youtube.
TL;DR: don't fight wood bros, there are different ways to veneer based on different skills and equipment. All are valid.
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Dude, hes making 1/2" wide veneer, no shit its not gonna walk. Try that shit with a 8" or 12" wide board and come back and let us know how it worked out. Also your initial assertion was that a tablesaw was primary tool for cutting veneer, its not and never was. Veneers are not made on bandsaws. They are made on specialty machines that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to say you cant cut some 1/8" or 3/16" thick veneer that later has to be planed and sanded down to proper thickness, again its a resawing operation but to say that a bandsaws primary job is to cut veneer is stretching it.
I said bandsaw, and I meant for shop-made veneers, obviously. Just because they're thicker than the thinnest viable commercial alternative doesn't declassify them as veneers. What do you think people did before the giant industrial slicers existed?
whoo
has more woodworking experience than everyone else in this thread put together, read his post above.Here's a guy cutting 15''+ veneers that are <1/10'' off the blade on a machine from 1925. He was aiming for 1/16th and got under 1/10th, so that's about 0.02'' in drift. You need calipers to notice that.
I didn't say that, I said that when veneers are made it's primarily on bandsaws. I'll admit I wasn't as clear as possible and left out the "in the small/medium workshop" qualification. Since this is a hobbyist woodworking thread and not an industrial manufacturing thread I assumed that was understood. My bad. I wasn't intending to make this about veneers as much as I was responding to the idea that bandsaws have inherent huge drift and aren't capable of sustained, precise cuts. They are, if carefully set up.
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This looks like an amazing way to lose focus and kill yourself. About halfway through he realizes that on a vertical (edit: angled) miter the blade could hit the tool post, never mind that the blade takes three fucking minutes to spin down. 
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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This looks like an amazing way to lose focus and kill yourself. About halfway through he realizes that on a vertical miter the blade could hit the tool post, never mind that the blade takes three fucking minutes to spin down.
I used one a few times as a kid but only in miter saw mode. That old picture showing the guy ripping a 4x8 sheet of ply with one freaks me the fuck out though. I don't know how you don't die doing that.
Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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My dad owned one for a long time and used it fairly regularly for home maintenance projects (never as a substitute to a table saw, that I know of). He still has all 10 fingers.
I also used it, probably a dozen or so times, in place of a miter and for cross cuts for length on MDF that's already been ripped for width. Never got my hand closer to the blade than using a table saw and don't even remember having a close call with the saw.
It makes sense for vertical miters and cross cuts. The angled miters and rip cuts really don't.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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I'm running into problems with my crosscut sled. I thought this was just an issue with wet lumber, as I bought a metric fuckton of it for a decking project for the gun range, but I am getting intermittent kickback issues on my sled, while crosscutting, without a stop block, and I'm trying to figure out why this could be the case.
I built the sled a year and a half or so ago, the bottom of it is MDF and the front and back are 3/4 plywood glued up to inch and a half. I totally understand why I would get kickback if I was using a stop block, that makes sense to me. But what I can't figure out is how I can just be crosscutting a piece to a rough length and have the blade bind on me. With the wet 2x6's, it was just bogging the blade down, and I just thought it was water (because actually the saw was spraying more water than dust on some pieces), but I pulled a bunch of old beat up scrap wood out of the shed last weekend and went to cut them down to 12" or so to fit in the trash bin, and I'm having the same problem.
My first thought is that my sled is out of alignment with the miter guides, but both guides appear to be parallel and are 10.75" apart at both ends. So I don't know how that could be the case. My second thought was that the sled somehow warped, but doesn't that seem pretty much impossible with a MDF base? Furthermore impossible with the fact that my miter guides are parallel?
I'm really confused. I'm gonna rebuild the thing tomorrow, because I had a pretty fucking close call today, but just curious if anyone had any similar experiences. Do they just wear out? I dunno.
I built the sled a year and a half or so ago, the bottom of it is MDF and the front and back are 3/4 plywood glued up to inch and a half. I totally understand why I would get kickback if I was using a stop block, that makes sense to me. But what I can't figure out is how I can just be crosscutting a piece to a rough length and have the blade bind on me. With the wet 2x6's, it was just bogging the blade down, and I just thought it was water (because actually the saw was spraying more water than dust on some pieces), but I pulled a bunch of old beat up scrap wood out of the shed last weekend and went to cut them down to 12" or so to fit in the trash bin, and I'm having the same problem.
My first thought is that my sled is out of alignment with the miter guides, but both guides appear to be parallel and are 10.75" apart at both ends. So I don't know how that could be the case. My second thought was that the sled somehow warped, but doesn't that seem pretty much impossible with a MDF base? Furthermore impossible with the fact that my miter guides are parallel?
I'm really confused. I'm gonna rebuild the thing tomorrow, because I had a pretty fucking close call today, but just curious if anyone had any similar experiences. Do they just wear out? I dunno.
That honestly doesn't sound like it could be the fault of your sled; it's got to be the saw itself. Did you somehow manage to jar your saw table so that your miter slots aren't parallel to the blade any more? Check thoroughly against the front and back of the blade with a dial indicator or at least combination square registered in the miter slot. Are the cuts that you're making successfully actually square on both axes?
If the table is out of alignment there should be some adjustment screws underneath.
Failing that, is your blade dull? Bent? Clogged with resin from cutting pine? Wobbling or loose on the arbor? Bent arbor? Failing motor making everything badly underpowered?
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Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Miter slots are square, both ends same distance from the blade. Rails on the sled perfectly parallel. Blade isn't clogged, arbor tight. Could realistically be the motor...saw is a few years old, and it's a relatively cheap Ryobi.
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Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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So, endmill bit does a good job of clearing out excess material and keeping the router under control. Also makes less dust, so I don't feel like I've gotta mask up. Only problem is at a quarter inch wide, takes fucking forever to do a 4 foot piece. And I'll obviously need to run a surfacing bit over before I flip it.
But, making progress I suppose. Slow progress.
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If you've checked all that (properly), then I would either thoroughly clean your blade, or if you're using the original (or a big box store) blade, replace the blade.
Dull blades and blades gummed with pitch can be very "grabby" especially with underpowered saws.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Yeah, I suppose I could replace the blade as a precaution.
I'm starting to wonder if it was the riving knife catching the sled. I took the knife completely off and ran a couple quick cuts today and seemed to be better, but not a thorough test, and I was also pretty cautious about the whole thing, given I like my hands and all.
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