Official Luthiers Forum!

Well I thought I would report back on the final outcome on this one.

It turns out it was the blade. I was able to make it to a Woodcraft last week 10 minutes before they closed and picked up a 3/16" 10 tpi timber wolf blade. I was going for something with less tpi but this is what they had in 3/16" and the guy said it would work.

So brought it home, put it on, set everything up and the waves are gone. The cut is smooth and working like I expected.

In hindsight I'm thinking if I ever wanted to reproduce that wavy texture on a future project there be now way to pull it off with just a bandsaw. I'd need to build several jigs and break out some files. Unless Bosch starts selling those blades with that as a feature. It was a neat cut.

Thanks for the tips everyone.

John

I have the same bandsaw, no riser, got it from Lowes, and the blade is also from Lowes. The onyl time I have any weird blade action, from wavy stuff, to creeping in one direction, to not cutting straight, it's usually the fault of the guides. Double check your guides and see if it helps. You want almost contact on all the small blocks on the sides of the blade, and you want to adjust the rollers on the rear of the blade to just touch the blade on the rear when its moving at full speed. One thing to do when you start is to release all the guides, and pull the bearings back about an inch so everything is completely out of the way. Run the blade for a few seconds to make sure it is centered on the tires where it naturally wants to be. That's another thing that can cause bad cuts is the blade fighting to ride on a different portion of the tire than the guides are allowing. Once you have the blade adjusted so it runns naturally on the center of the tires, go ahead and snug up the guides with the saw off obviously. You may be up the creek already with that blade though. The waves might be happening because a portion of the teeth got bent over during a cut and smashed against the guide. This can cause a portion of the blade to cut fine and another to pull or drag in one direction. Either way, its the result of poorly adjusted guides when you mash teeth against them. If adjusting the guides doesnt do it, you may have destroyed the blade, and I'll agree with the member who said to buy a nice one. I had a blade from a wood working store for a LONG time before it went bad, and I bought the lowes blade to save some $$ as a temorary fix. Once it's shot, which will be far sooner than the nicer one I had, I'll go back to the better blade.

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