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Forum topic by JayG46 | posted 12-05-2013 12:38 AM | 5094 views | 2 times favorited | 10 replies | ![]() |
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12-05-2013 12:38 AM |
I share a shop with my uncle and we recently went half and half on a Laguna 1412 bandsaw along with the 3/4” resaw king blade. After reading nothing but great reviews, we were excited to get the machine up and running. However… There were issues right from the gate. The saw labored through some pretty mundane tasks like resawing 4” of white oak, which the 14” Grizzly it was supplanting was able to do with relative ease. We messed with the guides, the blade tension, the fence alignment, the table squareness, and where the blade was tracking on the wheel but nothing seemed to fix the problem. On the phone with the guy from Laguna, I casually suggested that it was behaving like the blade was dull, a possibility I had dismissed out of hand since the blade was brand new (and costs $150). Surprisingly, he suggested that the teeth may not have the proper set or the blade may have not been sharpened correctly, an issue they had encountered recently. The offered to send us a complementary 1/2” blade to test out that theory. Well, it took the blade a week to arrive and once it did, it was 125” instead of 115”, thereby rendering it useless. They apologized and offered to send us a new RK blade, along with a 1/2” blade, provided that we send the other two back. A week later, the blades had not arrived so I called to ask when I could expect them. I was informed that they had not been shipped at all since they were out of the material to make the RK blades but no one had bothered to let me know. I followed up a couple of days later and miraculously they had found some material and the blades were on their way. Another week of waiting (they apparently still didn’t want to spring for FedEx air) and finally we had our two blades. We’ve put the RK blade to use but still can’t seem to resaw anything over 3 or 4” using the fence with predictable results. I followed the instructions for setting the fence for drift, but it seems to vary significantly between the 1” test piece and the wider stock we are trying to resaw. As you get deeper into the cut, the workpiece separates from the fence past the blade. Some minor fence adjustments haven’t corrected the problem. It would make sense that the pressure on the blade would increase while resawing and make the blade want to drift more, but this seems pretty extreme. Laguna is fond of sawing that good bandsaws should hardly drift at all. I cut a bunch of 1/8” thick pieces from 2” stock with decent results but there were still quite a few tooth marks that had to be removed with the drum sander. And again, this is something that our 14” Grizzly could also do without issue. The guides are slightly worn from testing the saw out with an improperly sharpened blade but it doesn’t seem like it should allow it to drift so much. The tension on the saw is as high as they recommend it to be, and there is a school of thought that says that you shouldn’t need to over-tension a bandsaw to get it to track straight. Is there another aspect of the set up that could be causing this problem that we are neglecting to address? Is it possible that the blade wasn’t the problem in the first place and there is something else wrong? I really want to love this thing. I really need to use it as soon as possible but something just isn’t right. Thanks in advance for your thoughts/help. -- Jay Gargiulo, Naples, FL www.swallowtailwoodcraft.com "Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things."- Miyamoto Musashi |