Question about band saw

[Tamer]

I just bought a 9" band saw for some of the craft work that I'm doing. I cann't get it to cut a straight cut. the blads keeps going wright and left.

Any ideas or suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Tamer

[Anthony Diodati]

[George]

Blade goes one side then the other?

Got the guides properly set? Check that owners' manual, but most like just a paper thickness blade clearance. Also make sure the blade is restrained aft by the thrust bearing so it can't exit the guides.

Make sure you've got recommended tension on the blade, and as little open space as possible above the piece, or it'll promote wobble.

Now, if it is "leading" to one side only, a common occurrence with lower grade blades, you can compensate by feeding a bit off direct, which is not a lot of problem if you're sawing in a straight line, because if the guides and tension/exposure are correct, the error is pretty constant.

Now there are those who might contest this conceptually, but once the cut is made by the teeth, you don't need to have a fence at all, so you can have a bullnosed piece of 3/4" thick clamped to the table with the nearest approach at the tooth position to establish your thickness. You may now feed at the angle which gives you a straight line.

Or there is the flip response - get another blade. Some are better than others, but all need to be adjusted to do good work.

[mttt]

When I bought the 9" Delta, I didn't know about setting tension or the guides. By setting both properly, I got it to give reasonable results (from a $99 machine with the OEM blade). Only after moving up to a 14" with a quality blade did I see consistently good results.