Buying a bandsaw

Ray... check here

picked one up at the local Menards on sale for, IIRC, about $89. Comes with a stand but would fit a decent sized bench too.

Stones

That looks good, and the price is right. Now I just have to figure out where to get one. We don't have Menards in this part of the country.

Some tools come in cheap versions that are useable. The bandsaw is NOT such a tool. If you really need abndsaw for the things only a bandsaw can do - spend a few hundred dollars and get a decent machine. The top end machines are still useable after 5-10 years, so used might be a way to go. The woodworking groups are FULL of stories about people who bought a cheap (usually Chinese made) bandsaw and either spend half their time tinkering to get them aligned or throw them away in frustration. The whole idea of a bandsaw is to get accurate, repeatable cuts. Also, the smallest machines have no really good quality blades made for them. Go to the other groups and check it out. Good luck.

Neutrodyne

According to John H. Smith :

That may be true for the sorts of work that the woodworkers do, but it's by no means true of the sorts of demands that a usual rocketry hobbyist would make of a bandsaw.

Woodworkers do things like trying to slab off 14" wide veneer off hardwood. Accuracy, repeatability, and ruggedness are essential. It's hard to do that with any bandsaw at any price.

But for a rocketry hobbyist, who'd seldom place even as much demand as pattern cutting 3/4" plywood, virtually anything would do. At the rocketry end of "woodworking", it really makes little difference, and the parts are all interchangeable anyway.

Virtually _all_ consumer-grade bandsaws are made on the same 3-4 factories in China, Taiwan or Korea. Including the Deltas. There's simply no difference between them but paint colour, plastic bits, and how easy the instruction book is to read.

Check out woodworking magazine reviews of bandsaws. It's obvious from the pictures, and sometime they even admit it in the text...

Even at the "serious" home woodworker end, in the venerable 14" Delta (famous "gold standard" floor standing bandsaw) class, _everything_ is either (a) made on the same lines as the Delta, or (b) an exact clone of the 14" Delta, and needs exactly the same amount of tuning as any other.

To get away from the mass produced homogeneous morass of consumer bandsaws, you have to pay $1000 and up for industrial units. Like the Italian ones at appalling prices.

My recommendation for a rocketry enthusiast is to make a reasonable analysis of your requirements - throat depth and cutting depth, and pick a bandsaw "class" (2 wheel vs 3 wheel, 10" vs 14", bench vs. floor model etc), and find a brand that's been around for a while. Not necessarily a "name" like Delta, just one that you can establish has existed for more than a handful of years - ie: Craftex, Grizzly or Rexon. And be prepared to fiddle. You'd have to do that with a $2000 Delta too.

[I would tend to think that, since a lot of rocketeers are going to be using a bandsaw for fin cutting, a three wheel bench unit is going to be the most usual choice in order to handle sheet goods. Not a lot of cutting depth or power needed, but has the throat for swinging the sheet around.]

Me? I'm a woodworker too - I have a 14" Delta clone floor model with extender (it can rip hardwood 12x14s if I had plenty of help holding the wood...). My rocketry hobby _seldom_ comes anywhere remotely close to the capacity of the unit. That unit would set you back approximately $250US brand new, and is indistinguishable from the $500-$600 Delta when tuned properly. Way overkill for most rocketeers.

Anyone know anything about the Ryobi brand? Home Depot carries it.

Never tried their bandsaw, but I've seen/used others of their power tools, which seemed to be well-made.

-dave w

Ray, If the price is right I'd go for it. Just make sure you keep the receipt, Home Depot will take ANYTHING back on a return, as long as you have a receipt.

Tested that with my stuff, eh?

Good advice--the 1/2 HP motor on my 10 inch Delta is overkill for even the thickest balsa :-).

I've heard the 12inch Delta is less useful for resawing because the max blade is thickness 3/8 instead of 1/2inch.

Any tips for resawing balsa into C grained sheets? I was thinking of tilting the table to align the grain. One of these days I'd like to chop up a 4x4x30" block of contest balsa into sheets for glider wings.

Zack Lau W1VT NAR 80361

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

According to Zack Lau :

With balsa or basswood I don't believe it matters very much. See below.

To give you an idea how familiar I'm with cutting balsa in a "formal" way, I had to look up what "C grain" meant. Oh, _quarter sawn_. Every hobby has to have their own terminology. Sheesh... ;-)

("A grain" is usually what's known as "flat sawn".)

Resawing can be quite an art. There are a whole pile of factors involved.

Traditional resaw blades (often 3/4" or larger) are largely for when:

1) you don't want to have to fiddle; just set the fence and go 2) you're running close to the power capacity of the saw (thickness and wood hardness). 3) You have a heavy duty bandsaw and can tension it up far beyond the capability of benchtop saws.

It's nice to simply be able to set the fence and go, but, frankly, much of the time you can't with consumer grade saws, because the blade won't track parallel. Usually because of uneven tooth set.

Because of that, many people use pin guides (a single vertical reference point right beside the blade), and "skew" the feed to ensure that the cut is straight relative to the wood.

Secondly, trying to resaw accurately (ie: 1/8" sheets) on a non-level table is really really hard. Especially if you have to skew the feed.

If you're well below the power capacity of the saw (thin or soft wood), a good quality 1/4" blade with the right tooth count and even tooth set should do it just fine.

Thirdly, as long as you have ample excess power, a good sharp blade, and don't push the wood too hard, it quite likely will track pretty well through soft woods, regardless of uneven tooth set.

I'd aim for something like this:

- go with a level BS table - either bevel the block (on a table saw if you have one) so your "slicing" will be 90 degrees, or, nail/screw the balsa block onto a "carrier" to tilt the block on the bandsaw table.

- use a 2 or 3 TPI 1/4" blade. Make sure you have the blade guides adjusted right, and for heaven's sake, try not to damage either side of the teeth.

Do your setup with saw fence, and then try resawing a hunk of soft wood (as soft as possible - a green (wet) construction 2x4 or cedar) and see how well it tracks relative to your saw fence. If it's "off", it's probably due to uneven tooth set, but all is not necessarily lost - leave out the fence and try to guide it by hand - optionally build a vertical reference post beside the blade to keep the thickness.

There are people who can resaw 1/40th inch veneer off 10" wide hardwood without _any_ guides with just a bit of hand sanding to finish. But I'm nowhere near _that_ good.

Frankly for this application, I'd use a 10" table saw. No problem with keeping that blade tracking... The problem being you waste a lot more wood than you would if you had the bandsaw technique down well.

Hi Chris--thanks a lot for the advice--I have a much better idea of what I need to do to get thin sheets of light C grain balsa. More importantly, I have a better idea what I don't need to do since I'm working with the softest hardwood I can obtain.

Quarter sawn or C grain balsa is preferred for glider wings because of its stiffness and relative lack of warping. Contest balsa is very light balsa--just 4 to 7lbs/cubic foot. Model rocket types generally make their glider wings out of solid sheets of the lightest C grain balsa they can find. Good contest gliders typically float away, in case you are wondering why we don't use more sophisticated techniques.

I can see that this isn't worth the effort.

Wood waste is factor--really light balsa is hard to find. C grain is hard to find because the suppliers cut sheets out of rectangular blocks, so only a small percentage of the sheets ends up as quarter sawn. Light C grain is so hard to find that serious rocket contest types have actually made pilgrimages...to Iowa.

Blade tracking isn't that critical in this application--glider wings are often tapered at tips. Nor do I need full 30 inch sheets--wings are typically cut into sections to add dihedral, or upward bending, to add stability to glider designs. Cutting wood for home use, rather than resale, considerably relaxes the requirements :-).

Zack Lau W1VT

(Iowa is the home of Sig Manufacturing, BTW)

According to Zack Lau :

True. Just doing a few makes me prefer to use a tablesaw.

But...

I can see you haven't tried to resaw on a bandsaw very much... ;-)

Blade tracking is _critical_. The tracking problem can be MUCH more than you're thinking.

If the saw teeth have an uneven set, the saw will refuse to track straight relative to the fence. If you try to force it along the fence, the band will bow to one side or the other, or, quite literally the cut may decide to take an abrupt turn sideways.

This destroys any pretensions of having the cut straight across the wood, let alone along the piece.

We're not talking a "gradual effect". You can completely ruin your workpiece within inches...

[My woodstove has eaten the evidence of many...]

Depending on blade tensions, wood hardness, etc, a bow could be way more than 1/4", and in some cases even break the blade.

With something soft like balsa, proper blade tensioning, a good sharp

2-3TPI 1/4" blade with an even set, and slow stock feed, it should be easy. No matter how crappy the bandsaw is...

But it may not be. Practise on less valuable wood first - as soft as possible. If the cut starts to wander off to one side, skew the feed, and see if you can still control it.