866-216-2166 Products SALES Service News & Media Company Contacts Products All products Joinery machines Band saws minimax s 45n formula s 400p - s 500p - s 600p - s 700p - s 800p - s 900p Band saws The SCM joinery machines are the products of continuing in-house development complementing the sum of the finest skills and know-how. Minimax Formula Circular band saws for woodworking The band saw is probably the most important tool in a woodworking workshop, next to the circular saw, and is also very useful in creating craft objects. The band saw is often undervalued because its potential is not fully understood. What is a band saw A close examination of a band saw reveals that it consists of an upper and lower wheel. The diameter of the wheels determines the dimension of the saw section. Read more Related case studies minimax s 45n formula s 400p - s 500p - s 600p - s 700p - s 800p - s 900p Frequently Asked Questions How do I know what bandsaw is the right size for me? We'd all love a bigger bandsaw, more capacities, etc. but there are always budget constraints, space issues, and so on. My advice is, "Buy as much bandsaw as you have the room and can possibly afford". In all my years of doing this, I have yet to hear one owner complain about having "too much" bandsaw. I started with an MM16 years ago (S400P now), since it fit my needs at that time and was at a lower price point. I had no idea then how important the bandsaw was to become in my shop. I had grown up with a Delta 14”, like many of us, and I was unaware what a bandsaw could really do. Once I started cutting with the MM16 I wanted to use it more and more, and started moving many table saw applications with solid lumber over to the bandsaw. I then started craving a larger table and more rip capacity, so 4 years later I sold the MM16 and got a MM24, which I still have. So, like so many other times in my life, I spent money twice to get the tool I should have gotten the first time. Yes, it would have cost a bit more then, but not near as much as buying twice, and I would have only cried once. Read more What's the smallest blade I can run on your bandsaw? You can go as small as you like. The stock guides are good down to 1/4". Anything narrower than that and I'd suggest a guide like the Carter Stabilizer. Some folks just hang onto their 14" bandsaw (I did, and you can never have too many bandsaws), just for use with really small blades, like 1/8”. Should I get ceramic guides or some other type? Our stock bandsaws will have the Euroguide system. These have a 50 year proven track record, and utilize an industry wide standard guide mounting post, so if you prefer another type of guide system you're not stuck shelling out another couple of hundred bucks for a conversion kit just to install them. I have tried many guide systems over the years (Several Carters, Laguna Ceramic guides, Paddock Tools) and I personally prefer the Euro guides. They adhere to the KISS principle. No tools required, quick to set up and effective. However, if you do decide you want something else, then pretty much all your aftermarket guide sets will fit the SCM saws. My advice is to use the Euroguides at first, THEN decide if you really need something else. It's easy to get carried away and spend lots of money on parts you might never actually use. If there's money burning a hole in your pocket, I would spend it on blades before aftermarket parts. Read more What are the best blades? There are too many choices and many good manufacturers out there to answer this definitively. My two most used blades are the Lenox 1" Woodmaster CT, carbide tipped blade. (resawing, ripping, nearly all straight cutting operations, even plywood). And the 1/4" Lenox Diemaster, 6tpi (gets most of my contour cutting and small parts slicing.) What kind of cut quality can I expect? Excellent, really. With standard blades you will see some mill marks due to the nature of most bandsaw blades. These are common and normal because the teeth are offset to both sides of the cut line. The more aggressive the blade (like a 2tpi blade for resawing) the more pronounced the marks will be. One thing about most carbide tipped blades that is different than standard blades is the teeth are ground with no set or rake. They cut straight down, so you will experience fewer mill marks with them and a much better finish right off of the bandsaw. Read more What is the right TPI (Teeth per inch) to get? With set tooth blades you need to have at least 3 teeth in the material at any instant or it will pull your material back and forth as the set fights itself, and no more than 6 teeth or you won't clear the debris, which leads to burning and blade failure. For instance if you have a 6" thick block of wood, then an aggressive, 2-3tpi blade would be a good choice, but not for 3/4" stock, where a 4- 6 tpi would be a better choice. These rules go out the window, however, with a no set carbide tipped blade. You don't have to be concerned about how many teeth are buried in the wood at any moment of time with carbide tipped blades because this type of blade cuts straight down and through, unlike a set toothed blade. I have ripped 1/4" thick boards with my Woodmaster CT and its 1.3 tpi. You still get tear out there, but no loss of control during the cut. Read more What is the correct position of the Euroguides to the blade? I keep my thrust bearing back about 1/8" on a 1" blade. Lots of beam strength in a 1" blade so no need to ride the bearing and wear it out early. By doing this you will find the thrust bearing won't even come into play until you start cutting some tall, hard woods, 6 plus inches, especially if the blade is sharp. For a 1/2" blade, about 1/16" back, 1/4" blade, almost touching. For the side guides, I get them close (a relative term, and subjective – I use no feeler gauges, dollar bills, etc. I just eyeball it – does that surprise you?) without actually touching the blade, and keep them the same distance behind the gullets that you set your thrust bearing at. Don't worry if they spin a bit during a cut, they're designed to do that, and it could be harmonics that is spinning the disc with vibration, not the blade actually spinning it, they may even appear to spin backwards. Read more What is proper blade tension? First and foremost -- Tension is subjective. I think there are decent guidelines out there, but no hard, fast rules to live by. I have experienced good cutting with the same blade at different tensions The only reason I say this is to free you up to experiment a little and realize you can’t do much damage by picking the “wrong” tension, since both “right” and “wrong” don’t really exist, only variations that approach optimal. You will find the simple on board gauges on our bandsaws are quite, respectfully useful and repeatable. I’ll mention more on that later, but first I would like to discuss tension meters, since they and the numbers they provide are much talked about in chat rooms and other forums, then go into my personal “feel” method. Regardless of width of blade I tension each blade about the same. Obviously, narrower blades require less spring pressure to get to that “same” tension. Read more Do you have to track your blades in the center of the tires? No. Our saws are basically flat tire bandsaws. They are not crowned like most others, therefore you can track your blades, pretty much, wherever you like on the tires. For more aggressive blades I like to see the bladed tracked so that the teeth are over the front edge of the tire. For finer toothed and narrower blades I will track those so that the back of the blade is close to where my larger blades were so that I don’t have to adjust the position of the guides too much. Plus, it will be harder to pull the blade off of the wheel when attempting to back out of a cut, like is often practiced with contour cutting. Read more How hard is it to change a bandsaw wheel’s tire? Our bandsaw tires are not glued on. And, instead of making you pull one or both of your wheels and take them to ship them to a facility capable of stripping, re mounting and gluing, then balancing the wheel (this often takes several weeks where you will be without a bandsaw), with one of our saws, if a blade brakes and cuts the tire or it's just time, we use a tongue-and-groove rubber system that you can replace, yourself, in five minutes. You heat up the tire in some hot water, stretch it around the wheel, snapping the tongue into its groove. Since these are flat tire bandsaws, you don’t have to try and create a crown and you can start cutting again right away. Read more Do I need to make a jig to test and set the wheels coplanar to each other? Please forget everything you may have read about co-planer wheels. It really is given way too much air time and means even less on flat tire bandsaws, like these. You can, theoretically, have coplanar wheels for one particular blade at one particular tension and one particular tracking adjustment... Change blades, it all goes out the window. Think about it. You have a fixed lower wheel and an upper wheel that tilts -- how can this ever be coplanar? Within the vicinity of coplanar is more reasonable, and almost every saw is there. Waste your energy making a jig that does something, not making a jig to try and test something that can't really exist. Read more Case History Lorenzo Vianello Read more Andrea Schiavolin Read more SCM Wood Product Service Spare parts News & Media Company Contacts Sectors Wood Glass Metal Stone Plastic Advanced materials SCM World Partners Area Spare parts service SCM Group Subscribe to our newsletter Follow us on © 2020 SCM Group VAT number 00126480409 Privacy policy