Dave.. just MHO, but my average cost at the saw shop is about $15 a blade, depending on size... and I wouldn't bother trying to fix a kinked blade for $15...
Like the ad should say...
Bandsaw blade ..... $15
Fingers and eyes.. priceless
mac
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I kinked one at the weekend.
I was roughing out bowl blanks for turning and the green hornbeam was being particularly troublesome and grabby, so I was sawing off a series of triangle with straight cuts, not trying to force a big blade around a tight radius. I didn't realise there was a triangular offcut lying on the table underneath the bowl until the blade caught it. It grabbed the wedge-shaped offcut and rammed it down into the throatplate, jamming the whole saw solid. The Tufnol throatplate smashed in two and the 1/2" blade managed to kink front-to-back (yes, edge-on) as well as sideways.
I don't think there's any way to de-kink that one. .
wow! I'm just glad that you didn't get hurt when it jammed!!
I was cutting some ash blanks this morning and it was scarey when you cut the circle and the bottom face of the blank is a lot smaller than the top face, and you can see naked blade between the wood and table.. Just waiting for it to try to push the edge of the blank against the table and jam up, but got lucky and cut 4 blanks with no drama.. (no drama, no trauma!)
mac
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Get smart and control the piece with a center pin. Luck has nothing to do with it when using a circle jig.
It's not the naked blade that worries me about that, it's the lack of support across the narrow base. It'll tip, and that's a great way to jam a blade and kink it.
A bracket or false table to support a pin from beneath is a much quicker and safer way to guide a blank flat-side down. Failing that, attach a wire guide from the top of the saw and mark out the centre on both sides of the bowl. They're only blanks - accuracy doesn't have to be that close until you're turning them.
yeah.. that's the point I was trying to get across... as usual, you hit it spot on, Andy..
I have a couple of different setups, the one I usually use is an expanding ring clamp like I used to use for finishing bowl bottoms.. These blanks were both larger diameter and thicker than I normally cut... (about
15" rounds), and wouldn't fit any of my present jigs..Accuracy gets pretty important for me on these blanks, Andy... they're wet wood that when trimmed will JUST fit on my 1442, and I need to eliminate as much wobble and shake as I can before they're spinning..
The pin to allow the wider face of the blank sounds like a winner.. got any pictures or links to them??
mac
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So there's your excuse for a bigger lathe 8-)
Any reference on bandsaw gadgets ought to describe them. They're usually a design specific to that particular bandsaw design.
Mine is just a thin sheet of metal with a 1/4" pin above it and a few holes to bolt it down. I use short machine screws into T nuts in the mitre gauge slot. Using a spiral of holes lets me screw it down for a number of different radii. Obviously the pin needs to be aligned with the front of the blade, but this is just a matter of where I clamp it.
There's also a more complicated design where the pin can slide from the front of the table back to a stop level with the blade. This lets you put a blank on, then saw stragith down to the circle diameter. It's an easier jig though if you fix the pin and just saw the blank first along a tangent.
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