A friend is giving me an old craftsman 14" bandsaw from the 1950’s. The saw has no motor. I plan to use a 1 horse motor on it but have a question on ratio. I have another 14" bandsaw for general use and wanted to set this one up for cutting hardwoods up about 3" thick. What would be the best gear ratio, would it be slower or faster than my stock 14" with a 3/4 horsepower motor.
As I’m sure you know, the general rule is “the harder the material, the slower the cutting speed.” A full horse at around 3/4 the blade speed of your general-duty should be ideal.
I thought slower would be better but I wasn’t 100% certain.
I think when it comes to wood cutting band saws the rate of cutting can be controlled by the speed of feeding stock rather than slowing down the blade.
True, but if the blade speed us too high and feed too slow you can get burning of the wood. Not as bad as on a table saw, but it can occur.
Your existing saw is probably set up to run at about 3000 feet per minute. For resawing, speeds are usually around 2000 or even 1500 fpm.
I’m assuming you’re really asking about belt and pulley ratios. Divide the desired blade speed by the bandwheel circumference to get the desired RPM, then it’s reasonably simple to figure the reduction ratio from the motor speed (probably 1725 or 3450 RPM).
Just watch out for inches vs feet in the conversions. You’re looking for about 546 RPM on a 14" wheel for 2000 FPM. On a 1725 RPM motor, that comes out to about 3.16:1. In real-world pulley diameters sized in whole inches, 3" on the motor and 9" on the wheel would yield about 1868 FPM. a 3:8 ratio would give about 2100 FPM.
Some basics on pulley ratios…Don’t put 100% trust in me as my brain’s tired. :eek:
Burning is the problem I am having now. I also get a slight bog down when resawing. I will probably go up to a 3/4" 2 tooth blade as opposed to my 1/2" 4 tooth.
I find myself wishing for a variable speed saw anytime I am cutting more than about 1 1/2" of hardwood.
Well, this would be the time to invest in a decent variable-speed motor.
I got the saw, it is a 12" instead of 14", so I likely will just keep a small blade on it and use it for small jobs.
As for blade speed on thick hardwoods. I went to a woodworking site to get an opinion on that and found several existing threads. They don’t seem to be in agreement on faster or slower. I seemed to feel the fans of slower speeds had a better argument. Matching the speed, the feed and the blade seem to be the biggest factor.