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The Incredible Versatility of a Bandsaw
George VondriskaDescription
Harvey Tools’s HW615 Bandsaw has a lot of great features including a nickel-plated table. This table can’t rust. This is huge when, like me, you’re cutting green wood bowl blanks or turning dripping wet logs into lumber. But it’s also a benefit in simply preventing ambient humidity from leaving a layer of rust on your tools.
Cutting curves
My go-to blade for general shop work is a ¼” 4 TPI blade. This blade performs great at cutting curves, and will handle ¾” and thicker stock easily.
Joinery
From creating tenons to cutting through dovetails, the bandsaw can handle it. I use a 3/16” 10 TPI blade for dovetails. The higher tooth count leaves a great surface finish, and the narrow blade allows me to make the turns I need to make to clear the waste out of the dovetail.
Cutting big stuff
For roughing out bowl blanks I use a 3/8” 4 TPI blade, and for logs to lumber I use a 1” 3 TPI blade. The large gullets on these blades make it easy for the blade to carry waste away from the cut.
More info
For more info on Harvey Woodworking visit the company’s website.
Of all the tools in the shop. I think a band saw is one of the most versatile tools you can have. There are so many things you can do on this from cutting curves to cutting straight lines. I'm gonna show you a bunch of that on the Harvey band saw. Now, I know what's happening.
A bunch of you are watching this and you're screaming at me right now. Never said a drink on the band saw. Any tool you're gonna get that rusty in like 14 billionth of a second. One of the things that's really cool with Harvey, there's a nickel plating on this saw that is not going to allow this to rust. So I very intentionally set my drink on there and I very intentionally had a little Gatorade accident just to be able to point out that one of the huge benefits to this is that we can't get it rusty.
Now where that's really gonna pay off is in a little bit. You're gonna see me cut a bow blank, which is dripping wet green. You're gonna see me do logs to lumber that's dripping wet green. So cutting that green wood on here. I don't have to have the concern of meticulously cleaning the table because it's gonna get rusty right away.
Let's look at a bunch of different stuff we can do on this band. So I love having a break on a bandsaw minus a brake, huge fly wheels in here. And when you turn a band saw off, it runs and it runs and it runs and it runs. So the safety of bringing that blade to a stop fast is huge, running a quarter inch four tooth per inch blade like I am right now. One of the things we can do with a bandsaw is we can easily cut curves like cutting out this furniture foot.
Now, one of the things that's great about a bandsaw is that we can go big something that would be really hard to do with a jigsaw or a scroll saw. So if I need three legs for this project, which I do instead of cutting one at a time, I can very, very easily cut three at a time. So, versatility of a Bansa part one, here's our break is I can cut curves in pretty much anything taking full advantage of the thickness capacity on a big saw like this from cutting curves. Now, I've switched to joinery instead of a quarter inch four tooth per inch blade. I've got a 3 1610 tooth per inch blade that's going to give me a really good surface finish on these three dovetails.
I'm cutting one of the things to notice here is that for this part of the joint, the table is angled down to the left, not every band saw will angle down to the left. So that's very handy. Now, when I want to come down to the right to get the other angle, I can take advantage of this hand wheel and I gotta stick my head in there to see what angle I'm on and dial that in like that. It makes it especially with a big heavy table like this. That hand wheel makes it so easy to adjust the angles back and forth.
Next cut I need is at 90. So when I put this leg back in like that, go, do I stop? Good to go. So in our world of versatility joinery on a band saw is one of the things it's really good at another blade change. Now, I'm running a 3/8 3 tooth per inch blade.
That's the blade I use when I'm cutting bowl blanks, I turn my bowls green. So this blank I'm about to cut is dripping wet green just the way I like it. This is a great time to call out again. The nickel coating on that table with this wet wood, wet sawdust, wet everything. I can't get the table rusty because I can't get rusty.
That beautiful blank is ready to go to the lathe with another blade change. This Banda is now a saw mill and we can very easily convert this log into lumber. Now, I'm running a one inch three tooth per inch blade once again, like the B blank. You wanna do this while the wood is wet. That's the best way to cut logs into lumber.
So this chunk of maple is dripping wet. Green. Good thing. We have a nickel table. I have logs to lumber.
Is that a verb? And a band saw many, many, many times. It is always so much fun when that opens up and you get to see what this gift brought. You just how pretty that wood is. Next step.
What I would do with this is put the fence on and start reselling this into planks. So we did a bunch of stuff here. Cut curves, cut, curves and thick stuff. Did joinery uh through dovetail, cut a dripping wet bow, blank cut, a dripping wet log. So great and saw.
The Harvey saw is a great saw for doing this. I love that with that nickel table. I don't have to sweat the wet wood that I so commonly cut in my shop and it's just got lots of great attributes going the break the Trion on the table. Quick release for blade tension, great machine.
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