What is best on a Bandsaw ? Blocks or bearings ? I thought bearings was a
better choice for guiding the blade.

"Junkyard Engineer" wrote in message
...
What is best on a Bandsaw ? Blocks or bearings ? I thought bearings was a
better choice for guiding the blade.


For what job and what size blade? I do a lot of wet wood for turnings, and
find the ceramic guides both slick and capable of holding a wide blade on
the line of cut. Once you get below 1/4" you might want to consider the
phenolics (cool blocks) or end grain wood with some oil to ease the way. If
you never use wet wood, roller types look nice. They do gum up if you're a
turner, though.

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 10:26:40 -0500, "Junkyard Engineer"
wrote:

What is best on a Bandsaw ? Blocks or bearings ?

Whatever works for you. You can make blocks work on pretty much
anything. Bearings on an "entry level" machine are often more trouble
than they're worth.

Pins (as used on the cheapest or oldest machines) are just plain ugly.
No one can agree what the best block material is. No one can agree
what the best bearings are (Euro bearings are at 90° to the usual US
pattern)

I've just taken the bearings off my 14" Axminster and gone back to
CoolBlocks. The machine is designed for, and built with, blocks, which
work well. They later started selling an "upgrade" bearing set for it.
However these bearings are taken from some Taiwanese parts-bin and
they're not designed for it. The lower guides have to have their
micro-adjusters removed before they'll fit. Even then, they don't fit
well enough to correctly track a narrow blade. So for about a year,
I'd abandoned the lower bearings and was using blocks below and
bearings above.

The other problem is that US-style bearings don't work so well for
narrow blades. If the adjustments aren't perfect, or if there's any
sudden jump in the blade or impact on it, then the blade can jump the
rear guide and slip backwards - which instantly destroys the teeth
against the side rollers. So after killing a couple of blades and
generally being a nightmare for setup, I've abandoned the things and
gone back to simple blocks.

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 10:26:40 -0500, "Junkyard Engineer"
wrote:

What is best on a Bandsaw ? Blocks or bearings ? I thought bearings was a
better choice for guiding the blade.

I run a bandsaw all day, and I've yet to see a signifigant performance
difference between roller bearings and carbide blocks. The biggest
difference has seemed to be in how the blade finally dies- With
roller bearings, the blades tend to start cutting crooked at the end
of their lifespans, and with carbide blocks they tend to become
brittle, with hundreds of tiny hairline cracks, and break. Of course,
either type of bushing can have either one of these problems- it just
seems that they are more common as I've broken it down above. Roller
bushings are harder to adjust (at least on the big saws) and carbides
are the easiest thing in the world to set- but they need to be
adjusted at each blade change, while rollers do not. Either system
will work just fine for you, so long as you've got them set up
correctly.
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