Bandsaw Resawing
George VondriskaDescription
George Vondriska provides instruction on how to select the proper side of the wood to cut a veneer, and which band saw blade will help you cut a great piece of veneer for your woodworking projects. A WoodWorkers Guild of America (WWGOA) original video.
Band saw blade provided by PS Wood Machines. For more information, visit www.pswood.com.
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I know a lot of woodworkers struggle with resawing. There's aspects of it that just make 'em pull their hair out. I don't have enough hair to spare to make that happen. So, let me give you a couple of tips that I think can help you with resawing. What I wanna do with this big piece of beautiful mahogany is cut a veneer from it that I can use for a project I'm working on. So one thing is, where the veneer comes off the board. I'm gonna peel that veneer from the outboard side of this board. So this is my veneer piece out here. It's kinda counterintuitive, if you're used to setting up a table saw, usually what we think about there is, the piece we want to cut is between the blade and the fence. In this case, we're gonna peel it off the outboard side. The reason for that is that, especially with a big board like this, if that skinny piece of veneer were between the blade and the fence, the big board would have a tendency to collapse in on it and mess up my cut. So I'm gonna set my fence so that the veneer comes off of my right side. The other thing that's really, really important is blade selection. I really like these low tension blades for my bandsaw. Lots of good things going for you here. With a low tension blade on the bandsaw, my bandsaw is not working as hard. Because, since we haven't drawn the blade up so tight, there's basically more horsepower available to make the cut. That lets me get through bigger pieces like this more easily. Another great advantage. Their thinner curf than other typical bandsaw blades. So just like on your table saw, you might run a thin curf blade on your saw so that you're taking out less wood. As a result, your saw's not working as hard. That leaves more power available here to do the cut. The other thing that's great about 'em is that because they're low tension, they have very little, if any, tendency to drift. So when you do your fence set up, it's much easier to do with a low tension blade in order to get a good quality cut. I'm looking for a tooth count of three to four teeth per inch. And you'll see, after I make this cut, a really, really superior surface finish off of this blade that's gonna require very little work on the veneer itself to clean it up. The other thing is that once I get started here, I'll be using a push pad in order to make the cut. Because we're taking the wood off the outboard side, the blade itself is very close to this face. I want you to be safe, so I don't want your hand out here, we want a push pad out here just in case something goes wrong and the blade does exit, we don't want your hand to be next in line. Let's get this blade going through the mahogany here and we'll see how it goes. There's our veneer. Excellent cut quality on there, which means very little work left to do on this veneer in order to get it ready for my project. So, a lot of the trick with bandsaw resawing is about blade selection. Also, take it easy as you're pushing the material through so that you don't overfeed it, and you'll end up with a good cut quality and you'll really enjoy your resawing.
I gotta say, this channel more than earns my dollars. Easy to view. Easy to use. Great content. If some is too beginner, I still find value. Thanks you all!
Where can I get the hearing protection that u r using?
George, I have a 14" Band saw and recently put a 6" extension on it to be able to re-saw wood so I can do some bookend matching. I am using 2" x 8" red oak half sawed and trying to saw it down the middle to make some 1" x 8" planks. However the initial flat planks have so much internal stress in the wood I am having a terrible time sawing the wood. Once sawed the planks are both cupped and bent. Wondering what my options are. Is there any way to flatten this wood other than to do more cuts and then jointing. Do you think steaming and then weighting them to dry would help here? A video of this problem would be wonderful.
Which bandsaw blade is he using on this? I googled “low tension band saw blades” and nothing says low tension
George, in another re-sawing clip I saw a little bit ago, you suggested to 'always mark your cut line when re-sawing', but I notice on this one, there is no mark visible... any reason for this?