By replacing the motor, I can re-saw 12" of maple |
Re-sawing is splitting a board in two...the hard way. Take a look at the picture on the left and you'll see what I mean. What you see in that pic is a piece of 3" thick hard curly maple, standing on edge roughly 12" high, and 20" long. You also see a re-sawed slice. The slice is 1/16" thick, and was peeled off of the block of maple on my band saw.
Unlike a table saw's disc-shaped blade, a band saw blade is a giant hoop, drawn tight between two cast-iron wheels. And unlike a basic, 10" table saw blade, which can get bogged down trying to cut through 3" of hard maple, even a small band saw can easily go through 6" or 7" of the same hardwood.
My own band saw - a gift from a friend - is a very basic Delta model from 1991. It has a 14" throat capacity (that's the distance between the blade and the back arm of the saw), and roughly 20" of vertical capacity, thanks to a riser block that was installed by the previous owner.
The thinnest sheet is 1/16" thick. |
When I first used the saw, it had trouble cutting through 3" of maple. Its motor offered up a mere 1/2 HP, barely enough for the most menial sawing tasks. I replaced the stock motor with a 1 HP motor I had lying around the shop, and now my little 14" band saw performs like a champ.
But I wasn't expecting to be able to cut through 12" of hard maple. that much wood would make my 5 HP table saw choke, if the blade were big enough to reach through all that. When I fired up the new motor on my band saw, and began feeding the maple into the blade, I was amazed at how easy it was to slice off thin sheets of wood.
I didn't find I needed any kind of fence to keep the blade on track, and I got down to peeling off 1/16" thick sheets. Wow! I'm sure that as I get better at controlling the workpiece, I'll be able to cut even thinner slices.
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