one of the biggest frustrations many people have with their band saw is that they can't cut straight using their fence if your blade tends to drift away from the line you've likely been told to angle your fence to compensate for that drift but tweaking the fence doesn't solve the problem it only hides it and in the process you create other issues if you take the time to properly set up your saw it'll perform better in every way including cutting straight without a drift this isn't a difficult process and it can really help even older and lower end machines so in this video i'm going to walk you through it first unplug the saw you'll be putting your fingers in all sorts of places that they would have no business in if that saw was connected to a power source now i'm assuming that you have a sharp undamaged blade a dull blade or one that has had the set in the teeth damaged because of improper setup is not going to cut straight no matter what you do to your saw so that's the first thing i would look into make sure your blade is not dull or damaged now let's talk tracking i like to center my blade on the upper wheel the tire of a bandsaw's wheel is crowned if the blade is set too far forward on that crown it'll twist to the left if the blade is set too far back it will twist to the right that's why virtually all manuals say to center the blade on the wheel that said some prefer to intentionally offset their blade way back so that the teeth themselves are centered at the apex of the crown their reasoning is they want to fully support the toothed edge of the blade which is the critical part because that's what does the cutting in my experience both these methods work as long as your blade is not so wide that it hangs off the back of the wheel when you center the teeth three-quarter inch and larger blades may do that what won't work though is anything in between you can't have the blade just slightly off center you either have to center the blade fully on the wheel or center the teeth of the blade fully on the wheel anything in between is going to lead to drift keep in mind that i'm talking about the upper wheel it doesn't matter how the blade tracks on the lower wheel as long as it's fully on the tire and not hanging off the side the crown on the lower wheel is far enough from the cutting surface that it's not going to affect the cut at this point my blade has been snug but not fully tight the next step is to properly tension it now many saws have built-in gauges for this purpose and some are reasonably accurate others not so much i just use my finger i do this test on the left side of the blade so it won't be affected by the guides i just push with my finger a few inches below the upper wheel i want to see no more than a quarter inch of deflection without pressing so hard that the tip of my finger turns white after i adjust the tension i double check how the blade is tracking on the wheel just in case that affected it and now i move on to the guides whether you have blocks or bearings this process is essentially going to be the same so don't be turned off because i'm adjusting bearings it will work with your blocks as well first set the guides so they are just behind the gullets between the blades teeth this is important because just
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