🦋 Ripping
For about 4 years, I have owned a Reliant 14" band saw, which is a Taiwanese clone of the Jet model. For nearly as long, I have been angry at the shop owner who sold it to me, when I came in to purchase the Jet, persuading me that it would be just as good. Convinced I had bought a lemon, I never really bothered learning to use it properly; and every cut I have made on it has been a battle against the machine. Well, a couple of things happened recently -- I am planning a new project which is going to involve a fair amount of ripping, and having not used the saw in a while, I decided to have a go at tuning it up. As I got into the internals of it, I discovered a number of settings that I had not gotten right when I first set it up; I straightened some of those up (but missed a fairly critical one) and was doing a test cut, when I snapped the blade. So, I put on the spare blade that I had bought back at the time I bought the saw; and discovered in so doing that the blade guides were totally worn out. Ordered a new set, which arrived today; put them on, and noticed that I had been ignoring the vertical adjustment of the blade guides for all this time. Well with everything back together and tight, and the guides lowered to a more suitable level than they had been, I tried it out and found it cuts through wood pretty much like butter! Happy day -- I don't believe I will be using it to resaw through too thick a piece of wood, for the time being anyway; but I'm intending to get more comfortable with ripping than I have been.
posted afternoon of Saturday, July 14th, 2007
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