
Bandsaw Essentials Session 2: Making Cuts
George VondriskaDescription
Bandsaw safety is very important. It involves hand position and controlling the workpiece. We’ll give you great tips and tricks to help you better follow your lay out lines, and cut more accurately. We’ll also provide you with two different techniques for cutting multiple duplicate parts, and teach you how to cut non-ferrous metals.
With all the setup done on the saw and a blade installed, now we're ready to get on the band saw and start doin' some cutting. Wanna give you some general cutting tips, just to make sure that as we move forward from here you're handling the material and the cuts correctly. I'm gonna run a quarter inch, four tooth per inch blade here. I find that to be a good versatile blade to have on the saw. It's the one I'm using most of the time.
Now what I've done on this piece of walnut is laid out some curves and some shapes that I'm gonna take you through. As just a little sidebar to gettin' marks on walnut, these charcoal pencils are really cool. You can find them at art stores. You can find 'em on Amazon. We've got 'em sourced for you on the pdf that comes with the class.
It's a great way to make marks on dark wood, like I've done here on my walnut. Before we even turn the saw on, let's talk about hand position. What I find easiest when you're tryin' to really get good control on a band saw is to anchor your hands, and steer with your fingers as much as possible, not your upper body. So, the deal is that your shoulders and your upper arms are good at makin' real big movements. Your hands are good at makin' real small movements.
So, as much as possible, let your hands sit and then with just your fingers control the feed of the board. The other thing I like about that is that if our hands are anchored back here, then of course, we're well out of the line of cut of the saw blade. With the upper guard on the saw, I've got that very close to the top of my wood. Remember that unlike a scroll saw, this is not designed to actually put any down pressure on the material. We just want it to have, we just want it to be nice and close, but not touching the top of the material.
Once I turn the saw on, I'll get my hands anchored and then start just gently feeding into my cut, working my way through this curve and give you some tips as I go. Little light so we can see what we're lookin' at. So, let's start with talking about cutting speed, which is the rate at which I'm feeding the material. We can get band saw, we can get burn marks from a band saw, but nowhere near as bad as a router bit or a table saw. So, if moving too quickly has a tendency to make you wander off the line.
Don't be afraid to go slowly to make sure that we stay on the line. Typically with band saw work, we're chasing this with another operation like sanding, so if we do get some burns on there they're gonna get sanded off when the band saw marks get sanded off. So, going at a slow feed rate to be more accurate on the line is not a big deal. Hands resting on the table, fingers doin' the steering. Try to keep going in a flowing curve rather than start/stop, start/stop, start/stop.
As much as possible try to keep a fluid motion going. Now on this curve what I wanna point out is I'm using my right hand as a pivot point. So, with my hand anchored, my finger on the piece here, with my left hand toward the back of the piece, that's steering me around. It's kinda like using a compass and drawing a circle with my thumb over here being the center of that circle and I'm drawing the circle out here with my left hand. So, I'll power up again and have a look at that.
When I get to this circle goin' the other way it's gonna be just the opposite. My left hand is gonna become the center point as I use my right hand to pivot around it. So, hand anchored, center point. Pretty good down pressure here from my thumb so I can pivot around it. Now both hands are feeding as I do a relatively straight cut.
We're headed for another radius, so I can anchor a thumb and pivot. Now relatively straight, so back to two hands. Fingers are pushing. We're very close to exiting the cut. It's critical at this point that you really think about hand position.
You wanna have your fingers way out here away from the cut. Don't get so focused on the cut that you end up with a finger in line with it, 'cause then of course, when we exit the board your finger is next. So in fact, what's really happening is I get to a point here with my hands where I'm pulling the board through the cut rather than pushing the board through the cut to make sure I'm well away from where that board is gonna exit, or the blade is gonna exit. Takes some practice, just like anything else, but with a little bit of work you can get on that line, stay on the line. It's only gonna happen if you've done the setup that we talked about earlier correctly, which is the guide blocks and the thrust bearings are all doin' what they're supposed to do and the blade is sharp.
If the blade is dull, when we put forward pressure on it, when we put cutting pressure on it, the blade is gonna walk away from the cut. It's gonna have a tendency to wander, makes it impossible to follow the line. Now, you're gonna have occasions where I've got a quarter inch blade on the saw and we provided that radius chart for you that shows how big a radius or diameter you can cut with a given size blade. So, let's say I wanna make this cut and that quarter inch blade is too big to do it. I could change blades, or I can do a technique called relief cuts.
With relief cuts what will happen is we're gonna cut slots up to the pencil line. That's gonna make it easier for the blade to then swing through the cut. So, in this case, when i cut that little U outta here that blade would have a heck of a time turning that circle, so I'm gonna start hands anchored, fingers makin' the cuts, cutting straight in right up to my line, straight in, straight in, straight in. Stopping short of my layout line. Now watch what happens here.
When I start cutting in that first piece of waste wood is gonna fall out. That creates clearance so that the blade can come by. Now, while we've got 'em here, keep these little off cuts in mind, 'cause further along in the class I'm gonna show you a solution for this. This problem being sometimes these are so small they can get jammed in between the blade and the insert in the table. I'm gonna show you how to prevent that a little further along in the class.
The relief cuts give us that opportunity to cut a really tight circle like this without having to take the time to change the blade. The other thing I've got drawn on here is a square pocket. Now, in order to do that, we can't get in there and turn the corner. The pocket is so small, there's no way that this blade could cut to those corners, unless we do what's called a nibbling technique. It's gonna start out just the same.
I'm gonna follow the line, follow the line, do some relief cuts up to the line in the center. Then I'll stop and talk about the next step. Now, relief cuts. The way to think about this next step is think of the teeth on the front of the band saw blade as a power file. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get that last little bit of waste outta there remaining from the relief cuts and then I'm gonna move the board left to right across those teeth, raking the rest of their waste off the front, or off the bottom of my pocket.
If I push in too hard, then I'm gonna make a cut instead of a file, so that's not gonna be effective. I'm gonna have a kerf cut into my board. So, very very gentle forward pressure, again, a great time to have your hands anchored, your fingers applying the pressure and providing that lateral movement across the bottom of that pocket. Lookin' like this. Waste is gone.
Now, just a little bit of forward pressure, move laterally. See how it's just skinning a tiny bit of material off the bottom of that pocket. The nibbling technique is a great thing to know about, so when you run into occasions like this where you wanna end up with internal square corners it's a cut that you can make on the band saw that you might not think you could. That gives you some basic, overall looks at handling material on the band saw. Here on out we're gonna start lookin' at some more specific cutting techniques.
Compound cutting is a band saw cut where we take a two dimensional object and cut it out of a block to get a three dimensional object. A great example of this is a cabriole leg. In fact, we've got a whole class available for you just about makin' cabriole legs. These are very cool when they're done. The way that these get made is you start by doing a compound cut from a block.
Great application for a band saw. Where else could you make this kinda cut happen? So, here's what I've done so far. Produced my block, and this is just a practice block. So yes, it's got knots and stuff in it, not makin' a leg for a table, just doin' a practice chunk here.
Traced my pattern on this face and on to an adjacent face. Step one, we're gonna cut from one face in order to produce this profile. Now, notice a couple things in the setup. Talked earlier about giving yourself a bigger table. This is a great time to do that, 'cause what'll happen is that as we get toward the end of our cut, if I didn't have this long chunk of melamine on here, my leg would have a tendency to fall off the table, and this is gonna make it safer and easier to be accurate.
The other thing that we've got goin' here is the melamine is simply double-face taped to my band saw table, talked about that earlier, so that I don't have any clamps on here that I'm gonna run into and that double-face tape really does a great job of keepin' that nice and secure. Now one of the things we haven't talked about yet in this class is order of operation. This is important. We have, in this case, an occasion where we're doin' a couple of blind cuts. So, right here I've got a sharp corner.
I can't cut in and turn this corner 'cause the band saw blade won't make that turn. So what I need to do is cut in, stop, get out, come back and make the other cut so that they meet. Question is which one to do first. When you're thinkin' about this stuff, when you have to do an intersecting cut like this, always do the shorter straighter cut first. So, when you look at this, as a rule, I'd love to never back out of a band saw cut, but sometimes you're gonna have to do it.
So, when we look at this, if I cut straight in and back straight out, that's pretty darn easy to do, very unlikely that I'm gonna pull the blade off the band saw in doing so. If instead, I cut this curve first and I haven't relieved this yet, I would have to back all the way outta this and that backing out through that curve is good chance I'm gonna pull the blade off the saw. So, same thing down here. When we get to the foot, I'm gonna make this short cut first. Then we'll come back and do this curved cut.
Really, really important as you're workin', we're gonna produce a buncha waste pieces. Don't throw 'em out right away 'cause we're gonna need those again in just a second. Hands anchored. Fingers steering. Leave the saw running for your backout.
Pick up the foot. Anchorin' my thumb so I can pivot on it. Save the piece. Now, couple things. You saw there how techniques we learned earlier are incorporated into what we're doin' here, pivoting on my thumb, anchoring hands, pulling the stock instead of pushing the stock.
A new thing to point out is these small pieces that end up by the blade, let those come to a, let the blade come to a complete stop before you try to get that stuff out of the way so that you don't get near the blade. The other thing is that when you are gonna terminate in a corner like this, as I approach that inside corner, if you go back and look at this, I'm slowing down, I'm relaxing my feed pressure because I don't wanna over cut here and then have to sand that much material off. I don't wanna end up with a little kerf that goes past that inside corner. So that effects me coming this way and it also effects me when I come back this way. Now, I made a big deal outta savin' parts.
Here's why. Compound cutting means now we gotta do exactly the same thing from the other face. So, what we need to do is put everything back together. I don't really need that bottom foot, but I think I have one on the floor. There it is.
And then, just a little bit of masking tape is gonna hold this together in this cube form, in this shape so that we can do the cuts again. First piece wasn't quite long enough to wrap all the way around. With the cabriole leg, if this is something you're interested in, one of the things that Dave Munkittrick did a great job with this cabriole leg class on this producing the templates and they're available with the class if you sign up for that class. This one I'm gonna go this way so I can see my lines. And then, second verse same as the first.
If you wanna throw the pattern back on there and retrace the lines over the tape you can. I am going to eyeball through where the tape is, keepin' in mind this leg is still gonna get quite a bit of shaping when it comes off the band saw. Right here ease up the pressure. And again here, ease up the pressure. Here's the cool part of this.
Remember, we had that big block of wood, traced the pattern, did some cuts, resulting in a three dimensional object from those two dimensional drawings. It's the beauty of compound cutting and what a great job Dave did on the leg layout one of the tests of a cabriole leg being, is it balanced enough that it will stand up by it's own? And obviously, this one does. That's pretty cool. So, compound cutting is a great way to get started on cabriole legs, three dimensional carvings like duck decoys.
You don't wanna carve all that wood away. It would take forever. Instead, start with a compound cut on the band saw, then come back and do your carving, your shape and whatever the next step is. The key to this is workin' from two faces, bigger table if you need it, masking tape the parts back together. These cuts were still done with the same blade I had on earlier, the quarter inch, four tooth per inch.
Good surface finish, good ease of cutting. It's a great technique to know about. Sometimes you need to turn your band saw into a photocopy machine of sorts. And what I mean by that is you have an application where you need to make a lotta parts that all end up looking the same. I'm gonna give you two different approaches for this.
First case, what I'm lookin' for is three table legs that all look exactly like this. In this particular case they go on what's called a candle table. These legs surround a spindle. They're close enough together that if there are changes in the shape it's gonna be pretty easy to see that. So, here's a really easy way to get this to happen.
It's called pad cutting. In pad cutting we're gonna use our friend, double-face tape, and stick these parts together. It's important that the parts are stuck together. There's a lotta ways that you can do this. I've seen people do this with hot melt glue and that works okay.
What I don't like about hot glue is that it's got a lot of body to it, it's a very thick liquid. So, sometimes then when the boards go together, like I'm about to do here, the glue has so much thickness to it that it effects the way the boards come together. And with the tape, because it's thin, we don't have that negative effect. When you use double-face tape the board's gotta be clean and warm. If you're workin' in the middle of winter in my neck of the woods, Wisconsin, and your shop is cold, the tape's not gonna wanna stick.
Now we bring our pattern to this. You can see where this is goin'. We've got enough capacity, thickness capacity, on the band saw, we can easily cut through three three quarter inch thick layers at one time. In fact, we have more capacity than that. And because we're gonna cut all the parts together they can't help but come out identical, even if I make a mistake in the cutting process.
Now in this particular pattern we've got a nice straight edge over here that has to marry against the spindle when we're done, so it makes the most sense to cut that on a tool that's good for cutting straight lines like a miter saw. I'm gonna go take care of that cut. Then we'll come back and look at pad cutting these parts on the band saw. Be right back. I clipped off that square section.
Now we're ready to cut, once again using my quarter inch four tooth per inch. Like I said, what a versatile blade that is. It's on my saw most of the time. Gonna start here, back out, then come back and pick up this inside corner. So this is a great example of not a square inside corner, but a square outside corner right there.
There's no way that I can come in and turn the corner and keep that corner crisp. So, the cut has to come this way, back out, then come this way and that'll keep that nice hard corner. This isn't a compound cut. I'm not worried about savin' the pieces 'cause we're not gonna flip this and come back and cut again. I'm intentionally missing my corner.
Now I can come back and pick that up more accurately. Same thing here. I wanna end up with a sharp outside corner, so I'm gonna exit, pulling the material. Now again here it's, wanna get my hands away from that exit side, so I'm pulling the material instead of pushing it. And that will give us three legs that can't help but all be the same.
Limitation here is really only how thick a stack can I get inside my band saw. Really important aspect right here. These are not ready to be separated yet. Gotta do one more thing, which would be, do your sanding. If you take these to a spindle sander and you get all the band saw marks off while they're still in a pad, same concept here.
They're all gonna remain perfectly identical. Next thing is gonna be just a little bit different. What I wanna show 'ya is what's called a follower. It's that device and we're gonna use that with a pattern double-face taped to our material, little bit different approach. Let me get my stuff together and I'll take you through this process.
Next way to make duplicate parts is to use a shop made follower. This device couldn't be any simpler. We've got a block over here and a block over here in a T shape. Big thing, this block has to be a little bit thicker than whatever material it is you're going to be using the follower with. So, this about a sixteenth inch bigger than what we're gonna be cutting.
Then we create this T and using our nibbling technique I cut this pocket in the end. Using a disc sander I rounded the end. And the way this all comes together is the follower surrounds the blade, just like that. Now let me raise this guard, make it easier for you to see what's goin' on here. The real key to this is the lateral positioning of this thing, this way.
The more that this end grain projects past the side of the blade, the more waste you're gonna leave on the outside of the cut. Now, when you're first learnin', you're first gettin' the hang of this technique, I would go ahead and leave this pretty strong, between a sixteenth and an eighth of an inch. When you get better at it, you can skinny that up to where you're leaving about a sixteenth of an inch from here to here. The less waste we leave on there the easier it'll be to do the next cleanup step. The problem with gettin' too close is that there's the danger we could cut into the template, which we're gonna be using when we make the cut.
So, for positioning, let's leave that about a strong sixteenth. And then we wanna clamp this whole device to the band saw table. All right. Now the way the plan comes together is we need a pattern. We're not gonna trace the pattern, we're gonna follow the pattern.
We're gonna use that guide, our shop made jig, like a stylus. All right, here's where we're goin' with this. This is a leg for a table that requires four legs. Could I take these thicker pieces, stack four of 'em up and pad cut 'em? Yeah, maybe, but it's gettin' pretty tall there and would make for a really slow cut.
I also want the opportunity to show you here, what if I need to make 50 of something? There's no way I'm gonna pad cut 50 of these things. So, usin' this template and follower method works really well. The way it works is that our material that we're cutting tucks under that T, under the follower. That's why the base material has to be thicker than what we're gonna cut.
Think of it as keeping this arm perpendicular to whatever edge we're at. What that means is that when we get up here where the curve starts, we have to start turning this so that that arm remains perpendicular to that edge. This is such a cool way to get a lot of pieces, all of which are gonna look exactly the same. Next step here, do not take the pattern off until we do one more thing. Go to the router table, use the flush trim router bit.
With a flush trim router bit you can allow the bearing to ride on the pattern, the cutter will take away the excess that's stickin' past the pattern. That's why we wanna keep that excess minimal. If there's a quarter inch of wood stickin' out, the flush trimmin' is not gonna do a good job takin' that waste off there. So we do wanna keep that minimal. Now if it happens that you cut a little bit of a band saw blade kerf into your pattern 'cause you didn't get this set up just right, don't panic.
You can fill those kerfs with auto body filler or epoxy after it's dry, sanded and you'll be able to save your pattern. So, we've got two things goin' here. Pad cutting, when the number of parts that you're cutting allows, within the capacity of your saw. Or, usin' a follower like we've created here. You can cut a gazillion pieces that are all the same and this is a really good way to make sure your parts are duplicated, kinda like turning your band saw into a photocopy machine.
When you have a need to do so, the band saw is a great way to cut non-ferrous metal, so non-ferrous's gotta be aluminum, brass, copper, thin wall stuff. Need to talk about blade selection here. I went ahead and did a blade change. Remember that when we're working with thin stock in general, we want a high tooth count, that number being we wanna keep about three teeth in the material all the time. We talked about that earlier.
I'm running a 14 TPI blade for what we're doin' here. If you use too coarse a tooth, if you try to cut this with a four tooth per inch blade it's gonna get really bad really fast. The dynamic of it is that that big gullet grabs on to this thin walled stuff and it's just gonna catch, it's gonna be really ugly and the cut quality is gonna be horrible. Other thing that we wanna think about here, we don't want dust collection for this. So, I'm gonna take my dust collection port off and just set that aside.
You'll still hear the vacuum runnin' in the background, but we're no longer connected to it. The reason is if these metal shavings come off and they're a little bit warm we don't want 'em gettin' drawn into the vacuum or the dust collector and layin' in that pile of sawdust hot where it could be a fire hazard. So, we'll get rid of that altogether. I've got a chunk of aluminum angle iron here, 14 tooth per inch blade in the saw. Here's how it goes.
Kind of amazing how easy it is, huh. Straight cut to cut that to length. We can do what the band saw's good at. We can cut curves. We've got a nice small blade in there.
Takin' that a step further. If we wanted to clean that edge up you could sand that with your standard sanding tools, get those band saw marks out. So really, what it's all about here is making sure it's non-ferrous, make sure you're cuttin' the right stuff and make sure you have the right blade in there which is that fine tooth count to make sure that those teeth aren't hangin' up on the thin wall stuff we're cuttin'. Those things in mind and your dust collector disconnected, this is a great way to cut non-ferrous metals.
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