Destressing Your Bandsaw Ways

Many things influence the performance of your bandsaw and the outcome varies according to any one or many of those influences. The outcome is of course reflected in the quality of the cut left as the wood progresses into, along and through the cut. Identifying what causes poor cutting is often problematic because the variables are so diverse and range from the bandsaw blade type to the amount of pressure you apply where and when and then too the tension you apply to the many different saw blade types, widths and tooth types. I thought it would be interesting to look at this as we investigate bandsaws, bandsaw blades, bandsaw use and so on. I produced these cuts using different blades, different tensions and different pressures. If this outcome doesn’t seem confusing then nothing will but believe me, there is rhythm and harmonics in the whole. Below you can see what happened to the right of the piece of wood and how after the initial start the score started to set up its own pulse rate. I changed the tension as the wood progressed into the cutting blade and new tension disallowed the more dramatic variance.

It will be an interesting journey but one that should bring ever greater clarity to an amazing workhorse.