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I purchased the Laguna LT-18 3000 series bandsaw from Woodcraft, and thought that I would post a review.
First off, let me say this is a great saw. It has a 4HP Leeson motor, 18 inch cast iron wheels, a sturdy welded steel frame construction, a large cast iron table, geared table adjustment with a gas lift balance, and sturdy cast iron trundles. A great feature that I wasn't sure about at first is the ceramic upper and lower saw guides. The performance of the saw owes a lot to these babies, more on that later.
I outfitted it with the 1 inch Resaw King blade. I just had to see for myself what all the hype, good and bad was.
Okay. I ordered it from Woodcraft, as they were having a sale. I had been thinking about a bandsaw for a while. After almost 8 years with my 14 inch Jet (with riser block), I had decided I was ready to step up to a more powerful saw with better resaw capacity and a larger motor. I had been able to get satisfactory results with my Jet, but the best results were to be had with a fresh blade and meticulous setup, and I didn't seem to be able to get more than one or two guitars worth of resawing with it before the blade dulled, and frankly, I wasn't sure I even wanted to try to resaw acoustic sets with it. If I were trying to resaw one or two sets maybe, but I had quite a bit of wood to chew through. Time to get a new saw.
What had intrigued me was the Laguna LT-14 SUV, the souped up version. It looked to be quite a step up from my Jet in terms of construction and power. Upon investigation, it became apparent that what it really was, was a 14 inch version of the LT-3000 series of bandsaws. The LT-18 was about 500 more, and since this will likely be my last bandsaw purchase ever, I decided to splurge.
I'm glad I did!
62 complete acoustic sets, back and sides, later, as well as about 500 pen blanks, various neck and fretboard blanks, a couple of Les Paul tops, and 8 Lutz Spruce soundboards, I feel I've put the product through it's paces enough to be able to make a fair evaluation.
Step 1, Ordered the saw. Easy, just went down to Woodcraf, ordered it, when it came in the manager drove it down to my house in his truck, he, I, and a friend unloaded it and placed it in it's spot.
Step 2, wired the garage. Here was a little bit of confusion. The saw came with a NEMA 6-20 plug, which required a NEMA 6-20 outlet, but the motor was rated at 40 amps, or so I was told from Laguna. You can't put a 40 amp breaker on a 20 amp outlet. Todd stock sggested that I use a 30 amp breaker and change the plug on the machine. I consulted an electrician and he confirmed that 40 amps is not the working draw of the motor, it really ran on about 17 amps or so, and so the 30 amp plug and outlet would be sufficient for any starting ampage spikes. Laguna stated to me that the motor has a breaker on it that keeps it from overheating, but cutting the plug off and splicing a 30 amp plug onto the end would not void the warranty. In fact, the manual states that it would come without a plug and should be wired up according to local code by an electrician. I guess whoever is manufacturing the saws for them now is putting plugs in. With the 30 amp 220 volt breaker and plug, the saw starts up and runs for several hours at a time without popping the breaker. I probably could have even used a 20 amp 220 volt breaker, but I'm glad I went with the slightly larger supply. The only other issue was making an extension cable from the wall outlet to the machine. I used 10-3 service wire and the correct ends for the outlets I chose, turn lock. Problem solved.
Step 3, Unpack and set up. This basically involved attaching the motor and tensioning the belt, attaching the table, and moving the off/on switch from the side to the front. There was also a tool-holder for the allen wrenches to attach to the side of the machine. After that was done, I installed the Resaw King blade. I adjusted the blade so that the teeth tracked on the center of the tire. On my Jet, this seemed to eliminate drift, and so I figured it would do the same for this machine. I adjusted the fence to align precisely with the miter slot. I also adjusted the table so the fence is precisely parallel to the saw blade. With the geared trunnion and gas lift this was easy to do. I also adjusted the ceramic blade guides per the instructions.
Step 4 Test. I ran a board along the fence and observed the saw blade positioning in the slot, precisely in the center of the kerf, the blade not touching the sides. With the resaw king, the carbide teeth are slightly wider than the steel band, so this was how it should be. I then tested a Les Paul top. Perfect! Precisely down the center, no drift. I was ready to start sawing up sets!
Step 5, start sawing! My first set was a board of some flamey purpleheart I got from Woodcraft. My goal was to get two back and side sets, two fretboards, two bridges, and two headplates. Carefully measured and cut out the components. To resaw the back and side set, I sawed down the center for the backs and side, then sawed each half in half. I did the same with a set of Bubinga, two backs and sides, matching components. Sawing these hard woods gave me a baseline for comparison. I had a few other 4/4 boards to saw sets from. I had some walnut, and some figured Black Limba. I did the same procedure for those. Then I moved onto the larger boards. I had some large 9/4 walnut boards to saw up. One had birdseye figure, two were heavily figured flame boards. I also had some 8/4 Prima Vera, African Mahogany, and Wenge. My procedure for these was to set the fence so that there was a quarter of an inch from the fence to the RIGHT side of the saw blade. This meant that I would take off a quarter of an inch each slice, with the slices ending up 5/32nds of an inch. Frankly with as smooth as the resaw King was sawing, I probably could have sliced right to 1/8th of an inch. With a coarser blade, I would have had to saw each slice at 3/16ths for cleanup and account for the kerf. I'm glad I went with the Resaw King. I believe I ended up with quite a bit more material than I would have otherwise. I did some walnuts first, followed by the African Mahogany, then the rest of the walnuts, followed by the Wenge, and last the Prima Vera. The Walnut sliced like butter, about 4 inches per second. The African Mahogany was EXTREMELY hard, about a half-inch per second was what I managed, and I had to push. I was afraid the blade was already dulling based on what I had read, but there was no wandering, just took longer. The next round of walnut sliced like butter again. The Wenge was pretty hard too, not as hard as the Mahogany, but still hard. I purposefully pushed the Wenge through as hard and fast as I could to see if the blade wandered or tracked off at all, and I couldn't get it to wander. The Prima Vera sliced like butter again. After the backs and sides, I sawed up a Luts Spruce billet I had laying around. I also got about 500 pen blanks with some of the leftover off cuts. All in all I cut 62 complete back and side sets and 8 Lutz soundboards, and the saw handled it all fairly easily. The last Prima Vera set was cutting fairly easily, compared to the first purpleheart set, and at no time was there any sign of wandering or dulling of the blade.
So what are my observations?
The minuses: As happy as I am, there are a few things I'm not excited about. One is the dust collection. Realistically, I probably don'y have enough capacity for this saw, Laguna reccomends 1000 cube feet of air a minute. I doubt my Jetdust collector does that. But still, I would expect it to be a LITTLE better than I'm getting. As a result, the blade guide gear adjustment gets clogged and is difficult to adjust up and down, I have to clean off the teeth on the back of the guide quite frequently. A dust port up there would have been nice instead of putting both dust ports in the lower half. Another thing I don't like is the table insert. It has 4 adjustment screws to level it to the table and a little clip under it to keep it in place, but the little screws kept adjusting themselves, and dust kept building up under it and lifting it up above the table. I ended up pulling out the screws and just leaving it lower than the table. It didn't seem to affect the sawing ability for my operations though. I don't know if better dust collection would have solved the issue or not. the confusion about how to wire my garage was a bit frustrating. I understand that different regions have different codes, but I think the original method of leaving the plug off and allowing you to wire to code would be better than attaching a completely inadequate plug to the motor and forcing you to figure out how to make it work in your area.
The Pluses: The assembly was easy and straightforward. The manual instructions were clear and easy to read. Setting up and adjusting the saw for operation was straightforward and easy. Once set up, all the components stayed put, except the table insert. I didn't find setting up the ceramic guides difficult or fussy at all. The motor runs very smoothly. The wheels are well balanced, and the wheel bearings don't seem to have any wobble or play that I can discern, and the whole operation is very smooth with little to no vibration. The blade tracks smoothly through the ceramic guides, no knocking or bumping sounds. The Resaw King blade performed flawlessly, with a super smooth cut and no dulling or wandering. With my Jet, after a few slices, I would start to get worried about the blade dulling and causing my cuts to be off, so I would resaw everything oversized to account for it, with this setup I am able to measure out exactly where I want to cut and get predictable results. The 4HP motor NEVER got bogged down, even in the toughest woods I sawed through. I have to say, one of the reasons I believe I got no wandering at all is the ceramic guides. If you haven't seen them, they support the blade in three spots. The back guide keeps the blade from moving back. while the upper and lower supports keep the blade from twisting above and below the rear contact point. there are two sets of guides, one above and one below the table. I have a hard time believing that even a dull blade could twist in those things, which goes a long way towards preventing problems.
All in all, I can't imagine a better machine in this price point. Obviously, there's the Grizzly machines. As good as they are, I decided that the 4HP motor and sturdier looking geared trunnion made it worth the $300 more dollars and am happy with my purchase. The ceramic guides are the icing on the cake.
I never imagined that I would get 62 complete sets sawn out of one blade, and it's still going strong showing no signs off dulling! Any one of those sets would have cost me $100 or more, many of them $200+ for the highly figured ones, plus shipping. For the $2200 I paid (including local sales tax), $250 saw blade, $200 worth of wiring (including the extension cable I made which cost $80) and the $500 worth of wood I sawed up, I consider that I'm ahead of the game!
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Old growth, shmold growth!
Last edited by theguitarwhisperer on Thu May 22, 2014 3:21 am, edited 5 times in total.
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