Bandsaw making some expensive sawdust

[Shovel Man]

Resawing Mahogany to make 3/16" stock today. I use a point fence rather than a full fence. Because even if the stock is flat to start, as sheets are sawn off it usually warps a little. No problem if the sheets are a little unflat but with the base stock unflat the point fence lets me resaw without taking out the bow and twist. Even thinking of putting a small hump in the table to accommodate more misbehavior in the stock. With a full fence it would seem that you have to plane the stock back to perfect every pass, rather than just getting it smooth.

Anyone else do this?

[FrankAtl]

I use a full fence and a drum sander. Works pretty well for me.

Frank

[jteneyck]

Nope. I use a tall flat fence. I face joint the board, plane the other side flat and parallel, and then joint both edges square to the faces. Then I take a slice of veneer off one face, then the other, using a uniform feed and keeping the board pressed flat to the tall fence. This keeps any change in moisture content in the board balanced and it rarely bows if you do it this way. If you try to take consecutive slices from one side it will bow if the moisture content in the center is different from the faces. If your BS is set up to cut straight you will get very nice, flat veneer of uniform thickness from one end to the other. Then I repeat the process of face jointing and planing before taking two more slices of veneer.

Doing as I described above makes it a purely mechanical process, no steering required as there constantly is with a point fence. What I lose in jointing and planing I get back with not losing slices that are too thin or thick, tapered, etc.


John

[alnandy]

We rarely use a full fence by itself for resawing, preferring a point fence.
The reason is blade drift. I've gotten 2 brand new resaw blades from Highland and both drifted substantially. For ripping, we adjusted the flat fence to account for drift and it was good to go. For resawing however, if the flat fence orientation is even slightly off from the drift direction, and you try an resaw 10-14" stock, the results won't be good.

First, we mark a line on the wood's edge where we want to resaw, then we actually do a bit of both: We adjust the flat fence for drift, attach the point fence to the flat fence and resaw along the line. Since the flat fence is already close to the correct orientation, we only need to make very minor adjustments using the point fence.

[JTTHECLOCKMAN]

jteneyck said:

---

Nope. I use a tall flat fence. I face joint the board, plane the other side flat and parallel, and then joint both edges square to the faces. Then I take a slice of veneer off one face, then the other, using a uniform feed and keeping the board pressed flat to the tall fence. This keeps any change in moisture content in the board balanced and it rarely bows if you do it this way. If you try to take consecutive slices from one side it will bow if the moisture content in the center is different from the faces. If your BS is set up to cut straight you will get very nice, flat veneer of uniform thickness from one end to the other. Then I repeat the process of face jointing and planing before taking two more slices of veneer.

Doing as I described above makes it a purely mechanical process, no steering required as there constantly is with a point fence. What I lose in jointing and planing I get back with not losing slices that are too thin or thick, tapered, etc.


John

---

Do exactly the same as this and works great. Been doing this for many years.

[Steve N]

A while back Earl, Lumber Yard, sold some tall point fences for the 18" Rikons, and I bought one. If I am making just a few cuts I use the point fence. If I am going to be making several cuts I'll get the fence set up, and dialed in. I generally face joint after cuts, just to get the off blade side as clean as possible. Of course prior to starting I edge joint, and face joint one side. Put in good, get out good [shrug]

[Phil S.]

I found this article from Highland Woodworking to be useful.

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/libra...20wood.pdf

I have some 8/4 mesquite I'd like to resaw into 3 pieces and will be stretching the capacity of my 14" Jet to get it done.

[grey spider]

I've always run one side across the jointer and then right to the saw. However, I'm going to start using John's technique. It just makes good sense. That how I run stock through my planer. Thanks John

Mike

[Herebrooks]

Of course it depends on the material and how it's behaving, but I have always used a single point fence. Your ability to steer the wood is important. After trying a bunch of different blades and widths over the years I have always come back to 1/2" flexband @ 3tpi. They're cheap so you can change them out when they begin to dull, probably 4 or 5 to an expensive resaw blade. My old Tannewitz 24" only resaws to 11", but I find things get hairy over that height(cupping). I've cut miles of veneer with this setup and it would be difficult to convince me to change it.
Bill

[RickJ]

I use a full fence, wide blade (1" resaw on a Laguna 14" BS) I got tired of drift using the 1/2" resaw blade on my 14" Delta BS. Works great.