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Are they worth the fuss and bother to construct? I've seen pretty cool stuff, with roller blade wheels, counterweights and such. I've got a bunch of resawing coming up, wondering if there's merit in getting fancy or just stick with the plain old tall fence...

I use a plain ole fence- about 5" tall.

Here is how I was taught and it works wonders- square your blade to the table, square your fence to table, joint one edge of your board square and make sure you have one side of the board truly flat, set your fence to the proper drift angle for the blade that is currently on the saw. If you do all these things, the wood will practically guide itself through the cut. Then all you have to worry about is your feed rate.

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ELEVATE || Next Level Lutherie
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It depends ( ) on a lot of things.

It's pointless having a flash fence if your saw is not up to it (stable, balanced running, precision blade guides, etc. etc.)

A few years back I visited Dave Borson and saw what was involved in precision resawing. Have a look at his website and you'll get an impression of the lengths Dave goes to. Of course, you might not be after that degree of precision, in which case a single point fence on a well set up saw can give excellent results. If your time is more valuable than your wood, a standard tall fence as per Chris is as much as you need.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Not sure about the value of my time yet;)

I have a Laguna SUV with the Resaw King blade, and I'm pretty smitten.

Ed, as you know, I have sawn the odd set here and there. I used a sled only to square up hand split blocks, once the blocks were square on three sides I removed the carriage used a tall fence to saw sets. The amount of fuss you need to put into adjusting for drift all depends on the set in your blade and the blade width, along with good ole horsepower. I used fairly aggressive and fairly narrow blades. They were .042 thick with a .080 kerf and were 1.25" wide. (Woodmizer steel bands that I could sharpen on my $3500 sharpening machine). Anyway, I would stick with a fence but just beware the slightest moment of inattention will result in you sawing a curve into your sets so practice a bit on construction lumber so you get a feel for feed rate and where you need to push to be sure and keep your pressure equal. One last thing, I flipped the billet, end for end, after each cut to cancel out any drift.

Good luck

Shane

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Canada

I have a Driftmaster which is nice because it makes drift adjustment easy (imagine that) and it's very easy to precisely advance the fence for consecutive cuts.

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

I don't have any drift with a 19" Grizzly Extreme and a Woodmaster CT. I can't really see the point in building one myself.

Thanks...

No doubt they are handy... It seems like the first thing is to simply get the hang of the technique and basic saw setup involved in getting it about right with a conventional fence... At that point - I am guessing that the fancy pants resaw sled setup will become a big help because you already know the mechanics of what needs to happen to get good, consistent resawing results... At that point - you use the mechanization to reduce your effort and fatigue... not to make trash into treasure...

Thanks

Yep I posted this before -- I think its better time spent versus a re-saw sled


A little trick we use to aid in re-sawing. We have stable blocks of MDF 6" thick, about 6" and 10" tall, the material to be process is glued to those before sawing. This procedure prevents cupping and of course the sacrificial blocks can be used over and over. BTW we always take off slices on the outside of the blade, not pinched against the fence.


Quote:
Why do you cut off the outside?


Likely something I picked up from "Fine Woodworking Magazine" years ago -- works great the guiding edge is always perfect, no binding less friction. Here's how we re-worked a Grizzly 14" so we could do a little re-sawing on it.

http://acousticguitarconstructionforum. ... f=7&t=1819

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

I find it a bit surprising that your out feed guide closes the kerf, but I guess with the blade direction, it's safe unlike it would be on a tablesaw. I can't find it again, but I once ran across a jig that used a 5lb weight on a cord to draw the wood through the blade, looked pretty slick...

Yeah the guide set up works great -- certainly different dynamics as compared to circular saw blade.

I also saw the feed system using a weight -- I believe was a set up used to test a bunch of different 14" band saws

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Where do you get 6" and 8" thick blocks of MDF? The only stuff I ever see is the standard 3/4" stuff at the box stores.

Thanks

Regular feed rate seems to really help a bandsaw cut well. I can't find that link anymore with the weights.

Glue up to make it as thick as you want.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Here's the sled I remember


http://www.finewoodworking.com/tool-gui ... ndsaw.aspx

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Thanks Ken, that's the exact one I was looking for. Looks pretty slick, if perhaps a bit overkill. It also seems they cut from the outside working in, and that the wood to be cut is glued to the sliding part of the sled, since it doesn't even touch the bandsaw table.