As most of you will know our horizontal bandsaw is very worse for wear. I’ve stripped and put everything back together 3 or 4 times now, I know Karl did a bunch of welding to repair it along with countless others rebuilding/adjusting/fixing. Despite all this, with a sharpish blade, guides all the way in, chocking the feed spring up and only cutting mild steel, it doesn’t cut even remotely close to square - +10 degrees easy.
Towards the end of the year I’ve got a couple of big jobs and would rather not destroy my hearing with the hot saw (which is also on its way out), so I propose that we invest in a new horizontal bandsaw (not just for me, as I’m sure everybody else is having the same issues).
We’re looking at roughly $1200 retail from Machinery House for one with slightly bigger cutting capacity, hydraulic feed and mitre angles you can actually read >>> http://www.machineryhouse.com.au/B006. Next step up is double that price, which is probably overkill.
Slightly off topic about buying a new bandsaw.
But your welcome to use the cold cut saw here assuming nothing is over 90x50 if nothing has been sorted by the date you need to start.
For those interested, we bought the current band saw (BS-5S) on 27/09/2014, for $583 (inc GST). It’s lasted 2 years and 7 months. In this time we have doubled our membership income from $20k to $40k.
So pretty much, we’ve got more than enough funds to justify a good saw. We shouldn’t skimp on this. @rut4ger thoughts?
For everyone: what’s the maximum size of material we are likely to cut?
I would very much like to see a dual mitre saw. If you’re trying to do double mitres on angle for joining 3 pieces together you cant do it without a dual mitre saw.
I think the next consideration after that is down to the quality of the vice system on it. The one we have is quite bad because it pivots if you dont have enough material, and when you tighten down on it it tends to buck up and shift the material.
Swivel head is a must, swivel vices make the thing super hard to use with long stock.
So I guess that means I’d like to see the BS7DS?
There are other suppliers of machines in brisbane like whitelawmachinery.com.au but they’re a bit more ‘if you have to ask you cant afford it’ I gather.
Personally I’d like to see the BS-912 so we don’t lose any cutting capacity over what we currently have, however either way I’m not too concerned as anything will be better than what we currently have now.
as an aside, the current bandsaw has the wrong blade again - teeth on one side have been flattened by the large wheels causing it to cut on a curve. I would like to know how straight it would cut with the correct blade.
Size wise, Its pretty rare that I’ve been limited by the size of the current saw, bigger is better, but I don’t think its worth spending the earth on one just to be able to cut massive stuff.
I feel the most critical feature is that it has a hydraulic downfeed rate. Its much more forgiving and intuitive than the spring thing, blades are much less likely to get shredded to hell when people inevitably use it improperly on the small gauge stuff. All of those listed above have that feature.
Then the clamp mechanism, I prefer the style on B062V, you adjust to the correct general size, then clamp fully with the big handle. Its quicker and more secure which is nice.
As for the “dual mitre” feature, I dont believe it is the “dual mitre” you’re referring to @devians like on a compound mitre saw for timber. I think its the type @Drew_Spriggs mentioned, It just swivels in one plane + and -.
I guess my 2c goes toward the B008A Its got everything I would like in a bandsaw, i.e.
Hydraulic downfeed
Swivel Head
Sturdy quick release clamping mechanism
Inbuilt coolant delivery
Swarf removal brush
Automatic off switch
Ticks all the boxes I have to tick. Also, if we get this machine, if no one has already put their hand up for it, I volunteer to go through the process @devians has done with the table saw, I.e. Properly installed, with interlock, and proper induction before use. With those things, its very possible to get many hundreds of cuts out of a blade, rather than the <20 people seem to get now.
