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I'm looking forward to sawing up some planks I acquired, but I want to go about it the right way. So here are my questions.

How much waste can I expect? What is the kerf on a standard re-saw blade? Off, say, an inch and a quarter piece, how many tops or sides would you normaly expect to get?

   I'll thank you in advance for any input you might have. Feel free to share any tips, tricks or ideas you might have for a re-saw virgin.

   Regards,

   Alain

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

Alain Lee Valley blades should work fine.
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&cat=1,41036&p=41 037
Here is a link to setup tips.
http://www.tools-for-woodworking.com/library/resaw.pdf
Hope this helps.

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I use blades from R&D bandsaws, www.tufftooth.com, the 1/2x3tpi industrials with hardened teeth and back edge. Works great on y Delta 14 with riser. I set the fence so that including the blade, the cut is 1/4 inch - thus 4 pcs per inch. You can squeeze a bit more if you are close to say 1 3/8, you could get 6, but with an inch, 4 is good enough for me - I always say, better to get 4 good pcs than 6 unusable ones.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

More input needed. What kind of saw are you running and as important, what's your budget for a blade?

Rule of thumb in my mind is you need a quarter inch of stock per slice for acoustic guitar wood. So a two inch billet will yield eight slices or four backsets or sides.

I'm running a Laguna 18" saw with Lennox TriMaster Carbide blade. I have a Delta 14" that I use mainly for necks. With proper setup there is little waste. The learning curve being what it is, newbies can expect to educate themselves as they go along.

www.highlandhardware.com has a great library for bandsaw setup. It all matters. And then there are simple tricks as to how to coil a bandsaw blade when switching tasks. Very useful. Please come back and give specifics and direct questions as you go and you'll be resawing like a pro in no time. Good luck too.

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Hmm...with a Woodslicer or Bladerunner, which has a 1/32" kerf, I can get 3 sets out of a 1.25" wide board pretty easily, depending on the wood. These blades cut very cleanly, and that gives me plenty of thickness to make a back, and works great for sides. But I keep my backs pretty thin. I'm not sure why people want a 3/16" (.1875) piece of wood that they're going to then sand off a whole .100" off of it. Makes no sense to me.
Starting with .140 or .120 seems like plenty.
That said, I will at least go for 5 slices on the sides so that I can get bindings from the odd piece.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
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How about one more question. What blade speed to use? I can switch from 1700-3200 or something like that. Don't know if I should go slow or fast.

I shoot for 1/4 " including the kerf. I use a 1/2" woodcraft house brand blade, and it does the job, but I'm sure that there is room for improvement. I could probably stand to upgrade the motor on my Rigid bandsaw. Even with my stone age setup, I haven't found anything that I could not resaw.
Let me recommend that you get some cheap oak or poplar to practice on before cuttng into an expensive billet of wood. You will make bad cuts while learning, so do it with junkwood. Don't try to force the wood to cut parallel to the blade. It will be at a slight angle. Once you find this angle, maintain this angle, and the cut should be good. If you find that the cut is curved top to bottom, this indicates that the tracking angle is wrong. have fun, be careful you'll have a lot of blade exposed. use push sticks, and jointer pushblocks, and no distractions please.

Al

Great advice,A Peebles, you can never be too safe.A good friend of mine has lost three fingers on one hand over the last twenty years,(it is his fretting hand too),so he can't even play anything he builds, anymore.
safety first,always.

If you Build it and they will buy!

Thanks guys for your replies. I'll be doing my re-sawing on Serge's Delta 14 with riser. He's got a good Lee Valley blade on there. He also has a nice fence from Busy Bee, so all should be o.k. equipment wise...

I was just cutting up some Makore, Zebrawood and some Wenge today on my dad's table saw. It's a good thing he has a 3HP motor on there. That Makore is very very hard to cut. Lots of silica if the info. I gathered yesterday is true. The dust just seems to grab in your throat as well...

Good idea to start on scrap. Walk before running. Sage advise.

I'll go slowly and we'll see how it turns out. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom, gentlemen...

Alain

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

I haven't done a lot of resawing yet, but I've had good success with a Woodslicer blade and the Kreg bandsaw fence with curved resaw fence attachment. I draw a line on the edge of the board and follow it.    

My bandsaw is a Jet 14" with riser block, stock motor.

If I were going to do a lot of resawing, I'd want a more serious resaw setup, but this has worked well for me so far.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

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[QUOTE=bbeardb] How about one more question. What blade speed to use? I can switch from 1700-3200 or something like that. Don't know if I should go slow or fast.[/QUOTE]
Definitely 3200 FPM. Resawing is almost always done between 3000 and 4000 FPM. I don't know that you would ever use 1700 FPM for wood. Maybe aluminum or some plastics.

Phil

I use a Rigid 14" with riser block kit for occasional resawing. I've had pretty good luck with it with a variety of different blades. One of the ones I liked the least, surprisingly, was Highland Hardware's Woodslicer blade. It cuts very smoothly, yes, and has a fairly narrow kerf, but it started wandering sooner than I expected. I've just installed a new Delta 1/2" 4-tooth blade (0.025" thick, but the kerf is closer to 0.040"), which I've used before, and I've found that even a relatively cheap blade like the Delta works well as long as it's new. I've learned just to take it slow, and not to feed the work into the blade any faster than it can take without slowing down the motor. And that Rigid 14" has only a 3/4 hp motor, so I'm pushing the wood through pretty slowly.

I built a fence from plywood and 2x4 scrap that I clamp down to the table. Might not look purty, but it works just fine.

I too prefer to err on the side of slicing sets that are a bit thicker than thin. I've learned the hard way that trying to get that extra set out of a piece of stock more often than not winds up with expensive wood scraps.

Best,

MichaelMichael McBroom38876.6005671296

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My cheap bandsaw won't resaw anything. I fear that everything is wrong rather than a single problem. I am going to rip both sides of the stock on the tablesaw and attempt to finish the cut in the bandsaw. Maybe the blade will follow the kerfs instead of going wherever it wants.

Carpenter-boy ain't no woodworker.

Hi Kurt, try the second link from BobC's post above, that PDF file contains great instructions for proper set up! Is your actual blade getting dull, it could be one of the factors, blade tension and tracking are also important, if your blade wanders OR tension and tracking are bad , you should really take a look at that file or make a search on your bandsaw brand and see if they have their own instruction booklet ordata sheet on their website.