All the band saws are back up and running now. Lately, they’ve been taking a terrible beating, and we’re going through blades at an alarming rate. Most of the problems can be traced to a single source:
Don’t push wood into the saw with any force at all!!
If you can feel the blade pushing back even a little bit, you’re pushing too hard, and in the process of destroying the blade and/or saw.
If you’re feeding the saw right, you should feel No Resistance from the blade. None. Yes, when blades get dull, the cuts can become very slow. But that doesn’t give you a green light to force your stock into the blade, and destroy the blade, bearings, tires, etc.
Also - you should try to match your stock thickness to the saw blade width. Thick stock, wide blade. If you need to cut a tighter curve ok, but understand, your cut is going to be Very very slow.
Be merciful folks.
