Believe The Hype!

The Wood Slicer bandsaw blades from Highland Woodworking are awesome.

When I first purchased my “Rikon 14 deluxe bandsaw my local Woodcraft store said that the 1/2” blade that came with it was pretty good. I took their advice on that, and also purchased a 3/4” 3TPI Timber Wolf blade for resawing. Both seemed to work, but my results were so-so.

For the first real challenge I resawed some green cherry logs for turning blanks. I started with the blade that came with the saw. Meh. It really felt like I had to give the wood a lot of pressure to get the blade to cut, which meant I was putting a lot of pressure on the guides and blade. The cuts were slow and uneven. A lot of dust was captures on the inside of the blade, resulting in a lot of scraping the hardened dust off of the blade and wheels. I took that blade off and decided it was only worthy for cutting up re-purposing.

The Timber Wolf blade definitely cut better, but I still felt like I had to push the wood too hard to get it to cut. I’d even tried changing blade speeds to see if that would help. It didn’t. I noticed that this blade also caught a lot of the shavings/dust and it was a pain to clean the wheels and blade up afterward. Even cutting cross-grain or with the grain I’m not impressed with it.

Which brings me to the Wood Slicer bandsaw blade from Highland Woodworking. I bought a 1/2” blade on the advice of one of the store reps and mounted it on my bandsaw. It easily sliced through dry 6” thick red oak. Walnut, no problem. I use Renaissance Wax on my cast iron to make the wood glide across the top, and with this blade, there was barely any resistance at all from the blade. Even with faster feed rates in hard woods it cuts like a hot knife through butter! I was also very surprised at how much quieter the blade is compared to the stock blade and the Timber Wolf.

The finish of the cuts were also very, very smooth. Although not recommended for cutting green wood, I decided to cut up some greeen cherry logs into bowl blanks just to see how it compared. The blade cut through 8” thick cherry like it was only 1/2” thick. It was still very quiet compared to the other blades, and there was no buildup of the green wood on the inside of the blade and on the tires.

Even though the Wood Slicer is marketed as a resaw blade, it also cuts cross grain very well. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only blade I’ll ever use. It’s quiet, inexpensive, sharp and it cuts so well it’s almost like the wood feeds itself through the blade. Here are the specs and details about the blade from Highland Woodworking.

“It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.” – Ferris Bueller

-- If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem. Roanoke, VA