Bandsaw Fence Advice and Recommendations
I am a hobbyist woodworker. I purchased a Laguna 14BX bandsaw about eight months ago after asking for advice from this Forum. A great recommendation.
This is my first bandsaw. I use it primarily for resawing to make thin parts for boxes and would like to start making veneered boxes.
I am using the Laguna Resaw King blade. On a good day I can cut uniform thicknesses of 1/16”. But every day is not a good day.
I find the supplied fence to be fiddly to set up and difficult to maintain accuracy. I know that a pass through the planer cleans up the saw marks and produces uniform thickness dimensions.
But this resaw blade produces very light cut marks which can be easily sanded out. For thin sections attached to an auxiliary board and sent through the planer, the output is sometimes chewed up. (I am using a DeWalt 735 planer).
It is my impression that the relative flexibility and single pivot point design of the Laguna fence may be the problem. I wonder if there are after-market bandsaw fences that may be better designed for the veneer thicknesses I am trying achieve.
Any advice or recommendations you may have will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Russ
Replies
I resaw with a Grizzly 17 inch. It has a similar hi/lo aluminum fence.
I found the greatest improvement to my resaw results came from a tall featherboard that keeps consistent pressure against the board (and the fence) for the full duration of the cut.
Mike
I have your identical Laguna Bandsaw/Dewalt 735 set-up (though I don't have your Resaw King blade) and have dialed in resawing but only after slavishly following Michael Fortune's bandsaw videos on FWW. My fence (now) works fine so I doubt you need an after market one. Still, the bandsaw gods are fickle and there are good days and bad days. Go figure. And yes to MikeinOhio's featherboard suggestion. Tim Roussseau has a a shop made featherboard video on FWW.
I never got consisten good results until I went with a fell length tall fence adjusted for drift.
I don’t use a feather board but I rarely resaw over 8”.
What about the Driftmaster fence?
I use the stock fence that came with the Laguna 14 SUV and a 1 inch Resaw King with near perfect results on a good day. I found that perfect alignment between the blade and the fence are key so that the trailing edge of the blade sits in the middle of the kerf when the wood is pressed against the fence. To find out I use a piece of plywood jointed side against the fence and cut a few inches and stop the blade in the cut. I look for a equal gap on both sides of the trailing edge. If adjustment is needed, I check first if the blade in centered on the upper wheel and does not touch any of the guides, then I check if the fence is aligned with the table and finally, if all is lined up, I loosen the table and adjust it but that is not frequent.
I have the Laguna 14/12. I don't think a different fence will help. You just can't get perfect veneer right off the saw.
I do thin plies between 1/8 down to .050" The only way I can do that is with a drum sander. If you do enough thin stuff that's probably where you'll end up anyway.
My fence is locked parallel with the miter slot and will never be adjusted. I align my blade parallel to the fence via the tracking adjustment on my saw. Anything over 6" and I use a tall feather board as was mentioned above. I use the BOW products Guide Pro.
https://bow-products.com/product-category/woodworking/guidepro/
Most everything that comes off the bandsaw gets a pass or two through the drum sander to remove saw marks and sand to final dimension.
Provided your fence locks securely in place, (horizontal and vertical) I find no need for any aftermarket items to "help" me make a straight cut.
JMHO
I like the Guide Pro a lot.
I have the Laguna SUV and get good results with the woodslicer 1/2" blade. The saw sets up with no drift, I never change my fences. I bought the tall resaw fence and an extra locking block (sold as a repair part) and keep both fences assembled and set up square to the table.
Some sawmarks are inevitable... +1 with JC2 on the drum sander. My planer can/will/might snack on anything under 1/8". I have thought about the carbide blades but the extra waste keeps me with the woodslicers.
Getting the table square to the blade is key. I make a short cut and flip the stock away from me end for end, then I slide the cut into the rear of the blade. When the spaces are perfect I am ready to rock.
Thanks MJ-
Is the tall resaw fence you refer to the hi-lo fence that Laguna supplies as standard? If so, that is the fence I am using on my Laguna 14”.
Also can you describe/explain the purpose of the extra locking block? Did it come from Laguna?
Russ
The resaw fence is an accessory from Laguna, the block is also from Laguna. I bought the extra block to avoid having to dissassemble / reassemble when going from normal to resaw and back.
The extra length on the infeed side is helpful for controlling a tall workpiece. Sometimes I'll add a block below to take some of the weight...but then I have to add a clamp at the back to prevent lifting.
See pic below.
Thanks for a clear explanation. The pic is very helpful.
The fence on my 14BX seems to be a hybrid of these two. I use mine in the tall orientation for resawing, but use a low feather board rather than a tall featherboard as has been suggested. I’ll look into this.
Recheck that blade, table, and fence are all square. I use a magnetic feather board on the infeed side. For big resaw jobs I keep the fence from deflecting by C-clamping a block to the table against the fence on the outfeed side.
My guess is your problem is not with the fence but blade tension. I have a Laguna 14 SUV that came with a 1” Resaw King. I saw a lot of veneer and for years I could not get good results with it - spent endless hours fighting drift and fussing with the guides. Mostly I used other blades and the RK collected dust. Eventually I bought a tension gauge and realized I was not tensioning it nearly enough. Carbide blades requires ~30k psi and on a 1” blade that is going to mean A LOT of tension. I had to give mine every bit of tension that the mechanism would allow (actually more than the saw seems comfortable with; I’m likely going to downsize to a 3/4”RK). But now it cuts beautifully. And now I just set the fence with the miter slot and have never had to worry about drift. It just cuts straight.
This is great info:
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2012/11/09/setting-bandsaw-blade-tension
One option you may want to look into if you intend to do a lot of thin veneer work, is the Accu-Slice system. It's not a cheap option but if you're looking to cut thin veneers that are glue ready it's amazing. I just got it and started using it and I was able to get slices down to 0.025", the system can go thinner. The only thing I needed to do to have the pieces glue ready was take a chisel to remove the slight burr when the blade exited the wood. I'm very happy with the results I get with it.
I posted this question to the Forum last week. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and very useful suggestions about ways to improve precision on resawing veneer on my Laguna 14BX bandsaw.
Without this feedback I would have been chasing a "better" fence than the one that comes standard. No one thought that this was the actual problem. And they were right.
Some of the suggestions (drum sander, Accurate-Slice system) were valuable but beyond the capacity of my workshop/budget.
I have just returned from a day in the shop applying the suggestions that I could apply. Here is what I found.
1. "Increase the tension on the blade." The tension on the blade was in fact low. I increased the tension to the upper range recommended by Laguna for the 3/4" blade I am using.
2. "Make sure the blade is tracking in the middle of the tires." The blade was tracking so that the teeth were not contacting the tire. This is one of the configurations Laguna recommends in its manual. The purpose is to reduce abrasion and wear-out of the tire. I adjusted the blade to ride in the center of the tire.
3. "Use the Bow Products tall featherboard on the infeed side." I bought the Bow and used it today. A big improvement over the low profile, shop-built featherboard I had been using. I will use the Bow from here on out.
4. "Make sure that the fence and blade are perpendicular to the table and that the blade is tracking in the kerf correctly." I thought I had done all of these things, but I hadn't rechecked them. I added a thin shim (strip of notebook paper 0.003") to the fence to bring it to perpendicular. I adjusted the table to bring the table perpendicular to the blade. In doing this, I discovered that the Laguna has a threaded stop to maintain the table in a horizontal position. I had never set this so the table had gradually moved away from perpendicular whenever I set it. The blade was tracking precisely in the kerf.
I didn't do these things one at a time and test, so no data on what the biggest contributor was. At the end I did a test cut of nominal 0.1" thickness. The thickness was precise within 0.005" both top-to-bottom and end-to-end over 12". This for me is the best result I have achieved on a good day.
The trick now is maintaining it. I will be more aware of how very small misalignments affect this kind of cut going forward.
Thanks to all for advice. Otherwise, I would still be chasing an after-market fence and wondering why the problem persisted.
Happy New Year.
Russ
Great to hear you solved the problem and thank you especially for the feedback. I run a one inch Resaw King on my Lagune 14SUV and centering the blade on the tire brings the carbide tips just in front of the tire so it goes along with Lagunas recommendation but I run wide kerf narrow blades also in the center of the tire without wear issues. One more thing to look after if you day resawing starts on the wrong foot is the adjustment of the rear guide. If it is too close to the blade trailing edge or if you apply too much force to feed the wood the blade can deflect and want to drift so the rear guide needs backing off or the tension increase.
Thanks. I had checked the front guides when I realigned the blade on the tire. But that moved the back edge of the blade closer to the rear guide. I’ll check on the position of the rear guide tomorrow. Time to rotate it for wear anyway.
Would not have thought of this, but obvious now that you say it. Thanks.
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