Scroll Saw Blog

Today I used the Kreg Bandsaw Fence for some “real” resaw work. The first piece was a 4-1/2″ wide piece of sassafras.  Initial prep work was the usual jointer (flat face) -> planer (other flat face) -> jointer (square edge) -> tablesaw (other edge parallel).  Since the piece was not going to be flipped like you would normally on tablesaw resaw work I didn’t bother using the jointer on the 2nd edge (the one ripped on the tablesaw).

I set the fence to about 1/16″ wider than the 1/4″ resaw I wanted.  I used a featherboard to keep the bottom from drifting away from the edge.  However I didn’t tighten the featherboard against the board as this would add too much pressure on the bandsaw blade. It was there mainly to make sure I didn’t push/pull the board away from the fence.  The featherboard didn’t get set until the blade was fully into the wood. After pulling the board about 8″ or so I stopped the saw and put some thin pieces of scrap in the kerf to keep it open–the board wanted to snap together after cutting.  This happens a lot with hardwoods that have stress in them from the way the tree grew and how it was cut on the sawmill.  The scraps in the kerf also kept me from closing the kerf on the blade when I switched from pushing the board to pulling it from behind.  A small push stick kept the blade against the blade as I finished pulling it through the blade.

After getting two 1/4″ pieces out of the first board, I then did some real work on another sassafras board.  This board was 3-1/4″ wide–the two pieces are then panel-glued to make the flat pieces for the woven boxes.

Some observations:

• My bandsaw is very underpowered for resaw work.  It only has a 1/2 hp motor.  This made resawing the first board slow work. The narrower board went quicker, but still slow.
• For those folks that don’t like tablesaws, it does have less “I-gonna-lose-a-finger” stress.  No kickback, no fighting the board.
• Since you’re cutting everything in one pass, alignment issues aren’t so picky as on the tablesaw
• I didn’t notice blade drift on either board. It is possible that the drift was into the fence and the reason it was so slow-going was the fence was fighting the blade. Regardless the cut was mostly straight–planing the resawn board didn’t show any varying thickness issues
• It *appears* that the kerf is thinner.  I haven’t made measurements to see if there is much improvement over the tablesaw

So far I’m happy with the Kreg Bandsaw Fence. I really need to re-power the bandsaw, but that’s a future project.  Until then, I expect resawing will be limited to softer woods such as sassafras.