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Which band saw?

bret

Well Known Member
Tooling up for the fuse-finish kits and wondering what band saw folks went with. And what blade, I heard a wood blade for aluminum ?
 
I have a harbor freight bench top cheapie and it works just fine with the blade it came with on any aluminum that I've attempted.
 
bandsaw

I bought the SKIL from Home Depot with a metal blade. I think is was just over a hundred dollars. But the feature that I love on it is the laser light that projects a line in front of your cut.
Don
 
There isn't much difference with the inexpensive saws found at the local retailers. I bought a ryobi which worked well, but blades were hard to find. Fortunately, there are places on the net to get custom blades made that are inexpensive.

Most of these also have 9" clearance between the blade and the body of the saw. This created a few situations were I had to get creative to make the cuts. With that said, while a larger bandsaw would nice, I'm not sure it's worth the expense.
 
I was fortunate to find the 14" Rigid bandsaw at a Home a depot that was selling them off as they were no longer going to carry them at that location. I got it for 1/2 price (about $180 IIRC). Unfortunately, they no longer stock the 93.5" blades there. I'm hoping that Lowes has them in store. The wood blade works well for aluminum. I was able to pick up the Rigid drill press in the same manner. Both have worked extremely well (wish my 30 gal Kobalt air compressor had lasted more than two years!).
 
Check on Ebay for a good 14" bandsaw. I have been in woodworking for 50 years and found this is the best value for the buck. Whether it be a Delta or off brand will not make much difference but you will find this size is suitable for most woodworking or metal cutting that you need to do. Look for at least a 1/2 HP motor or larger so that you can change blades from anywhere from 1/8" to 1/2" with no slowdown. Use a metal cutting blade for metal and a wood blade for wood. Extra blades can be ordered to size from my favorite shop in Miami called Smith Hamilton Shop. Ask for Valerie and tell her Roger sent you.
 
I bought the biggest bench mounted Craftsman and went with a custom made 18TPI blade that was 1/4 inch wide. Works great for me. The custom blades I had to have made through a local saw shop...9 bucks a piece (Twin Cities Saw). You need a higher TPI to work with aluminum and you need the blade thin enough so you make make corners relatively easily.
Good Luck...
 
Although a lover of fine tools, I bought the El Cheapo Harbor Freight bandsaw, and it has served me well in my build, no complaints.
 
Oh' the Craftsman works saw good.

My 10" Craftsman with the blade DanH recommended has worked great.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showpost.php?p=507894&postcount=14

I second this recommendation! :D I bought a 10" Sears Craftsman over a decade ago and it has worked on 99% of the cuts and I'm just about done with all the aluminum work. I agree with the blade recommendations too. A metal cutting blade with 14 teeth per inch cuts aluminum like butter and I think I used maybe four blades to date and I screwed up a couple of those trying to cut stainless or something else I shouldn't have been trying to cut with it. :eek: It's a portable table model so it doesn't tend to get in the way like a larger stand alone saw and the blades are only as far away as the nearest Sear's tool department or a Internet connection. :)
 
Depends

Depends wether you want a smaller bench top
or stand alone. Bench tops are nice for space conservation
and portability. I have a Home Depot Ryobi with a metal blade.
Works fine as long as you keep the blade contact bearings adjusted to keep the
blade aligned. I also run a wax stick lube on the blade before cutting. Keeps
them sharp much longer. My opinion is the metal blade is better than the wood for cleaner cuts. I also use a 10" mitre box with carbide blade for cutting angle.
(perfect square cuts)
 
Blade speed

Most or all of the band saws sold by HD HF and the like are intended for wood and do not slow down enough to cut metal. You can get away with cutting aluminum on them using a metal blade, but you won't have any luck cutting any kind of ferrous metal and will likely be using the wrong blade speed so they wont last like they should.
Just FYI
Tim
 
I bought one from grizzly and it was awful. I bought a Ryobi bench top from Home Depot and it is a good little saw.
 
Ditto Ditto

I got lucky at Home Depot as they were changing house brands and got a new 9" for $45. It is no better/worse than the ~$110 Skill, etc brands. I use the wood blade that came with and won't dare use it for anything but wood or aluminum. You might ask the guys at the box stores if they have a return or opened box unit cheap. It worked for me, but YMMV

The inside gets plated with aluminum shards and they get imbedded in the tires. I will be surprised if it is usable when I am done with the plane. It has functioned well for three years, and I clean the tires about every 6 months (now :D). I now use a vacuum with it, but the shards still get in everything, I just hope to keep them from the motor.

Good Luck, it's a good season for deals.
 
Check for a good 14" bandsaw ... best value for the buck ... a Delta or off brand

I agree with Roger. I've had a Delta 14". Used it for years in woodworking. For aluminum, I installed a 1/2" 14-18 blade and a speed control on the motor to slow it down.
 
Just about any 14" Band saw, bench or floor mount model, beats a hacksaw, every day of the week.
If you just plan on building the Emp only, use a hacksaw. Plan on finishing the whole project, go with any bandsaw.
1/4" x 18t or so blade is fine for wood and aluminum. Ferrous, not so much, but then no ferrous to cut on our projects anyway.
 
I bought my off brand 14" three wheel bandsaw at a garage sale for $10. That was a probably nine years ago and it is still going strong.

The key was to buy some 19 TPI blades for cutting aluminum. I found a shop locally that made the blades for me and bought five in 19 TPI and five with fewer teeth for cutting wood.

The thing works great on sheet and angle aluminum but isn't so good on anything thick.
 
Wood Blade

With 6.5 teeth per inch, on the recommendation of another builder. Cuts aluminum like butter, very easy and fast. With a pass past the sander, then a Vixen file and touch the edges with a mill file, it's done.

Dave
RV3B Which has lots of do-it-yourself parts....
 
For about $700 I bought a used Shopsmith setup that gave me the bandsaw, disc sander, drill press and more. What is particularly nice as far as building the RV is the variable speed that is inherent in it.

I have all the other tools stand-alone but find I use this more often than not due to that feature alone....

Craigslist is your friend here....
 
Minor thread drift here on blade selection!!!

A common misconception on band saw blades is to use a coarse pitch blade (Low TPI number like 4 or 6 TPI) for easy to cut materials like wood and aluminum, and use a fine pitch blade (16-20) for tough to cut materials like steel.

That is incorrect. The band saw blade pitch should be selected according to the thickness of the material being cut. There should always be at least 2 teeth engaged in the material for acceptable blade life and cutting finish. Even more teeth for a better finish.

So, if you are cutting a lot of thin material, then a high TPI number is appropriate. theoretically, if you are cutting 0.063 thick material, you should be using a blade with 32TPI or higher. in practice, this is cuts very slow and can even plug up the blade as the teeth are so small, so you can get away with a 16tpi or so blade and still get acceptable blade life and cut finish quality. If you use too coarse of a blade, you get poor finish quality and a very loud cut as the blade teeth are each "grabbing" such a large amount of material. It can even rip teeth off the blade if you get too aggressive.

Conversely, if you are cutting material 2 inches thick, you can use a very coarse blade. theretically, a 1 TPI blade would work, but in practice a blade this course is hard to work with since the teeth are so very deep. A 2-4 TPI blade would probably be more common.

The difference in cutting aluminum and steel is as was pointed out earlier with blade speed.

When cutting aluminum (And even wood) a high blade speed is desirable as it allows you to cut faster as more teeth are going through the material per minute, and there is no consequence about overheating the teeth on the blade with aluminum and wood.

BUT when cutting steel (And other ferrous material) a lower blade speed is needed as you will overheat the teeth on the blade and either melt them off with extreme speed, or just get them so hot they get very weak and lose their cutting edges too quickly.

Some good examples in our shop, when cutting the bar stock for the landing gear legs, we use a 4TPI pitch blade. The material is a very abrasive alloy in 1.5 inch steel barstock, but the blade is running at a relatively low speed. (About 400 Feet Per Minute) We also have some other parts we cut out of 0.25 inch steel plate. Those are cut with either a 16 or 20 TPI blade depending on what is handy at the moment.

We also cut some 1 inch thick plate for making the RV12 legs. We also use a 4TPI blade for those, but it is running as fast as our machine can run. (About 2000 feet per minute according to the chart on the machine).

We do use blades we buy from a woodworking shop for cutting aluminum, but that is only because they have the best prices I have found for big rolls of blades. We weld our own blades for the saw that cuts the aluminum. It is not really that important if the blade is advertised to cut aluminum or steel as long as you have the blade speed set correctly and the appropriate blade pitch for the thickness of material being cut.
 
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